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A WANDERER IN LONDON 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

a wanderer in holland 

fireside and sunshine 

the friendly town 

the open road 

highways and byways in sussex 

the life of charles lamb 

a book of verses for children 

listener's lure 



A WANDERER IN 
LONDON 



y BY 



e/v/'lucas 



WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY 

NELSON DAWSON 

A.ND THIRTY-SIX OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: METHUEN & CO. 
1906 

All rightt reserved 



UBRARY of CONGRESS 
Tin C«»iM IlKeivM 

SEP 13 I90f» 
0Ow»ir>it Entry 

CUsr Ol JJXCm N*. 






COPTBIGHT, 1906, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1906. 



J. S. Cashing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 






CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAOB 

No. 1 London and Piccadilly 1 

CHAPTER II 
Romance and the Wallace Pictures 17 

CHAPTER III 
Matfair and the Georgians 34 

CHAPTER IV 
St. James's and Piccadilly, East . . * . . . .44 

CHAPTER V 
Leicester Square and the Halls 59 

CHAPTER VI 
Trafalgar Square and Great Englishmen .... 75 

CHAPTER VII 
The National Gallery and the Italian Masters . . 85 

CHAPTER VIII 
The National Gallery and the Northern Painters . . 103 

CHAPTER IX 

The Strand and Covent Garden 119 

V 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER X 

PAGE 

Fleet Street and the Law . . . . . . . 135 

CHAPTER XI 
St. Paul's and the Charterhouse 146 

CHAPTER XII 
Cheapside and the City Churches 166 

CHAPTER XIII 
The Tower and the Amphibians 183 

CHAPTER XIV 
Whitechapel and the Boro' 198 

CHAPTER XV 

HOLBORN AND BlOOMSBURT 209 

CHAPTER XVI 
The British Museum and Soho 224 

CHAPTER XVII 
The Parks and the Zoo . . . . i » , . 238 

CHAPTER XVni 
Kensington and the Museums 247 

CHAPTER XIX 
Chelsea and the River . 265 

CHAPTER XX 

Westminster and Whitehall 277 

Index 297 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN COLOUR 

The Tower and the Tower Bridge . . . Frontispiece 
Piccadilly looking West .... To face page 16 

St. James's Street and St. James's Palace . . ,, 46 

Trafalgar Square ,, 76 

The City from Waterloo Bridge .... ,, 120 

St. Mary-le-Strand ,, 134 

In the Temple Gardens, Fountain Court . . ,, 138 

St. Paul's from the River ,, 150 

The Charterhouse ,, 160 

St. Dunstan's-in-the-East ,, 170 

The Monument ,, 186 

Staple Inn „ 212 

Kensington Palace from the Gardens . . . ,, 248 

Cannon Street Station from the River . . ,, 270 

Westminster Abbey ,, 282 

The Victoria Tower, House of Lords . . . „ 288 



vu 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN MONOTONE 



Dutch Lady. FransVanMierevelt (Wallace Collec- 
tion) To face page 4 



The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. Rem- 
brandt (Wallace Collection) .... 

The Lady with a Fan. Velasquez (Wallace Collec- 
tion) 

San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Francesca Guardi 
(Wallace Collection) 

Suzanne van Collen and her Daughter. Rem- 
brandt (Wallace Collection) .... 

Lady Reading a Letter. Gerard Terburg (Wal- 
lace Collection) 

The Laughing Cavalier. Frans Hals (Wallace 
Collection) 

Virgin and Child. Andrea del Sarto (Wallace 
Collection) 

The Shrimp Girl. William Hogarth (National 
Gallery) 

Interior of a Dutch House. Peter de Hooch 
(National Gallery) 

A Tailor. Gianbattista Moroni (National Gallery) 

viii 



10 



20 



24 



32 



36 



40 



52 



60 



72 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



IX 



Portrait of a Young Sculptor. Andrea del Sarto 

(National Gallery) To face page 80 

The Nativity. Piero della Francesca (National 
Gallery) 



The Entombment. Kogier Van der Weyden (Na- 
tional Gallery) 

Virgin and Child. Giovanni Bellini (National 
Gallery) 

Household Heath. Old Crome (National Gallery) 

Portrait of Two Gentlemen. Sir Joshua Key- 
nolds (National Gallery) 

Mother and Child. Romney (National Gallery) . 

Chichester Canal. J. M. "W. Turner (National 
Gallery) 

Admiral Pulido Pareja. Velasquez (National 

Gallery) 

From a Photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 

St. Helena. Paul Veronese (National Gallery) . 

The Death of Procris. Piero di Cosimo (National 

Gallery) 

From a Photograph by "W. A. Mansell & Co. 

Virgin and Child. Titian (National Gallery) 

The Avenue at Middelharnis. Meindert Hob- 
bema (National Gallery) 

Cornelius van der Geest. Antony Van Dyck 
(National Gallery) 

Virgin and Child. Filippino Lippi (National 

Gallery) 

From a Photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 



X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Mercury Instructing Cupid. Correggio (National 

Gallery) To face page 206 

Virgin and Child. Botticelli (National Gallery) . ,, 218 

Trtptich. Perugino (National Gallery) . . . „ 222 

The Demeter of Cnidos. (British Museum) . „ 226 

From a Photograph by "W. A. Mansell & Co. 

Jean and Jeanne Arnolfini. Jan van Eyck (Na- 
tional Gallery) „ 234 

Christ Washing Peter's Feet. Ford Madox 

Brown (Tate Gallery) „ 240 

Hampstead Heath. John Constable (South Ken- 
sington) „ 258 

Mrs. Collmann. Alfred Stevens (Tate Gallery) . „ 262 

The Minotaur. G. F. "Watts (Tate Gallery) . . „ 274 

From a Photograph by F. Hollyer. 

Holt Family. Leonardo da Vinci (Diploma Gal- 
lery) „ 294 

From a Photograph by F. Hollyer. 



NOTE 

The reproduction of "The Minotaur" by G. F, Watts and "The 
Holy Family" by Leonardo da Vinci has been made by permission of 
Mr. F. HoUyer, 9 Pembroke Square, W., from whom carbon prints 
can be obtained. 



Tfe Citie of LONDON ^<^- ^SQo 




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A WANDEREE IN LONDON 



CHAPTER I 

NO. I LONDON AND PICCADILLY 

A Beginning — No. i London — Charing Cross in Retirement — A 
Walk down Piccadilly • — Apsley House — The Iron Duke's statues 

— An old Print — Rothschild Terrace — The Motor 'Bus — The 
safest Place in London — Changes — The March of Utilitarianism 

— The Plague of New Buildings — London Architecture — The 
Glory of Disorder — A City of Homes — House-collecting — The 
Elusive Directory — Kingsley's Dictum — The House Opposite 

— Desirable Homes — London's Riches — The smallest House in 
London — Women — Clubmen — A Monument to Pretty Thought- 
fulness— The Piccadilly Goat — Old Q — Rogers the Poet 

LONDON, whichever way we turn, is so vast and 
varied, so rich in what is interesting, that to one 
who would wander with a plastic mind irresponsibly day 
after day in its streets and among its treasures there is not 
a little difficulty in deciding where to begin, and there is 
even greater difficulty in knowing where to end. Indeed, 
to a book on London — to a thousand books on London — 
there is no end. 

But a beginning one can always make, whether it is 
appropriate or otherwise, and since I chance to live in 
Kensington and thus enter London by Kensington Gore 
and Knightsbridge, there is some fitness in beginning at 

B 1 



2 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Hyde Park Corner, by that square, taciturn, grey house 
just to the east of it which we call Apsley House, but 
which I have always been told is really No. 1 London — 
if any No. 1 London there be. 

Let us begin then at No. 1 London — just as a French- 
man bent upon discovering the English capital would begin 
at Charing Cross Station, or, at the moment when I write 
these words (early in 1906), at Cannon Street or Victoria, 
Charing Cross Station just now, after the fall of its roof, 
presenting a most unfamiliar aspect of quietude — no 
strangers within its gates and no cabs about its beautiful 
Eleanor Cross. This is the day of unexpected changes in 
London ; but who would ever have thought to see Charing 
Cross closed ? — Charing Cross, one of the meeting places 
of East and West, whose platform William the Conqueror 
would surely have kissed had he waited for the Channel 
steam-boat service. 

To take a walk down Fleet Street — the cure for ennui 
invented by the most dogmatic of Londoners — is no longer 
an amusing recreation, the bustle is too great ; but to take 
a walk down Piccadilly on a fine day remains one of the 
pleasures of life : another reason for beginning with No. 1 
London. Piccadilly between Hyde Park corner and Devon- 
shire House is still eminently a promenade. But only as 
far as Devonshire House. Once Berkeley Street is crossed 
and the shops begin, the saunterer is jostled; while the 
Green Park having vanished behind the new Ritz Hotel 
(which sprang up almost in a night), the sun and the fresh- 
ness are lost too. But between those two ducal houses on 
a smiling day one may enjoy as fair a walk as in any city 
in the world. 

No. 1 London enjoys its priority only I think in verbal 
tradition. To the postman such an address might mean 



THE DUKE 3 

nothing, although the London postman has a reputation 
for tracking any trail, however elusive. The official ad- 
dress of Apsley House is, I fancy, 149 Piccadilly. Be that 
as it may, it is No. 1 to us, and a gloomy abode to boot, 
still wearing a dark frown of resentment for those broken 
windows, although the famous iron shutters have gone. 
The London rough rarely mobilises now, and when he does 
he breaks no windows; but those were stormier days. 
Opposite is the Duke himself, in bronze, on his charger, 
looking steadfastly for ever at his old home, where the 
Waterloo survivors' dinner used to be held every year, with 
lessening numbers and lessening, until the victor himself 
was called away. 

An earlier equestrian statue of Wellington once domin- 
ated the triumphal arch now at the head of Constitutional 
Hill, but this, I know not why, was taken down and set up 
afresh at Aldershot. I wish it had remained, for there is 
no culmination to a triumphal arch so fitting as a horse 
and rider. A third Wellington trophy is the Achilles 
statue, at the back of Apsley House, in the Park, just 
across the roadway. This giant figure was cast from cannon 
taken at Salamanca and Vittoria, Toulouse and Waterloo, 
and was set up here by the women of England in honour of 
the great and invincible soldier. There is a coloured print 
which one may now and then see in the old shops (the last 
time I saw it was in the parlour of a Duke of Wellington 
inn at a little village in Wiltshire), of the hero of Waterloo 
riding beneath the Achilles on his little white horse, with 
his hand to the salute : one of the pleasantest pictures of 
the stern old man that I know, with the undulations of 
Hyde Park rolling away like a Surrey common in the 
distance. 

We have no Iron Duke in these days, and Apsley House 



4 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

is desolate, almost sinister. Albeit within its walls are 
four of Jan Steen's pictures, to say nothing of one of the 
finest Correggios in England and Velasquez* portrait of 
himself. 

And so we leave No. 1 London frowning behind us, and 
come instantly to smiling wealth, for (unless 'bus drivers 
have deceived me) the little terrace of mansions between 
Apsley House and Hamilton Place is a stronghold of that 
powerful family which moved Heinrich Heine to sarcasm 
and Hans Christian Andersen to sentiment, and is still the 
greatest force in European finance ; and this is a point on 
which 'bus drivers are not likely to be wrong, because every 
Christmas a brace of Rothschild pheasants become theirs, 
and for a week the blue and yellow racing colours of the 
donor are sported on all the whips on these routes. 

Whips do I say ? Alas, there will not long be whips on 
which to tie any ribbons, be they blue and yellow or black ; 
for the doom of the omnibus horse has sounded, blown in 
unmistakable notes upon the motor horn, and already the 
monstrous Vanguards and Arrows are upon the town, every 
day in increasing numbers. The crossings of London were 
never anything but a peril, especially at the very point at 
which we are now standing, waiting to get across Hamilton 
Place (where the converging lines of traffic — east from 
Knightsbridge, west from Piccadilly, south from Park Lane, 
and north from Grosvenor Place — reduce the rule of the 
road to chaos) ; but they are daily becoming more and 
more difficult and dangerous as chauffeur is added to 
chauffeur, and one's nerves snap beneath the shattering 
racket of their engines. 

It was John Bright, I think, who said that the safest 
place in the world was the centre compartment of an ex- 
press train. One might adapt this remark and say that 




A DUTCH LADY 

AFTER THE PICTUKE BY FRANS VAN MIEREVELT IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION 



1? 



THE VANDALS OF PROGRESS 5 

the safest place in London will soon be the inside of a 
motor omnibus, for these vehicles are so massive that they 
would of necessity come out victorious in any collision with 
anything but each other, while if you are riding in one you 
cannot well be run over. 

But petrol in place of the patient and friendly horse is 
only a minor matter. Never in the recent history of Lon- 
don have so many changes come so rapidly as in the year or 
two preceding 1906 : to which belong not only this rise of 
the motor but the elimination of hundreds of landmarks 
and the sweeping away of whole streets drenched with 
human associations. Such is the ruthless march of utili- 
tarianism and luxury (some of the most conspicuous new 
buildings being expensive hotels) that one has come to en- 
tertain the uneasy feeling that nothing is safe. Certainly 
nothing is sacred. A garage being required for the motor 
cars of the Stock Exchange, what, one asks oneself, is there 
to prevent the demolition of the Charterhouse ? Since 
Christ's Hospital could be moved bodily to Sussex in order 
that more offices might rise in Newgate Street, why should 
not the Brothers be sent to Bournemouth ? The demand 
for another vast caravanserai for American visitors on the 
banks of the Thames may become acute any day: why 
should not the Temple site be utilised ? One lives in fear. 

I never look at the Adelphi Terrace without a misgiv- 
ing that when next I pass it will have vanished. Nothing 
but its comparative distance from the main stream of 
commerce can have saved Gray's Inn. There is an archi- 
tect round the corner ready with a florid terra-cotta tomb- 
stone for every beautiful, quiet, old-world building in 
London. Bedford Row is undoubtedly doomed : Queen 
Anne's Gate trembles: Barton Street knows no repose. 
Even -Earl's Terrace and Edwardes Square, in remote 



6 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Kensington, have but a few years to live. He who would 
see London before London becomes unrecognisable must 
hasten his steps. The modern spirit can forgive every- 
thing except age. 

The modern London architect dislikes large, restful, 
unworried spaces and long unbroken lines : hence many 
of our new buildings have been for the most part fussy and 
ornamental — and not at all, I think, representative of the 
national character. Somerset House (save for its fiddling 
little cupola) is perhaps London architecture at its simplest ; 
the Law Courts, with all their amazing intricacy and elabora- 
tion, London's public architecture at its most complex and 
unsuitable. One of the most satisfying buildings in Lon- 
don is the Adelphi Terrace ; one of the most charming the 
little row of dependencies to the north of Kensington 
Palace. St. James's Palace is beautiful, but Buckingham 
Palace could hardly be more commonplace. Nothing can 
save it but a coat of white paint every spring, and this it 
never gets. 

To Somerset House, the Adelphi, St. James's Palace and 
the Tower Bridge, different though they are, the epithet 
English can be confidently applied ; but Buckingham Pal- 
ace is French, and it would be difficult to use the word Eng- 
lish of many of the great structures now rising in London. 
We seem to have no national school of urban architecture 
any longer, no steady ideals. The new London that is 
emerging so rapidly lacks any governing principle. The 
Ritz Hotel, for example, is Parisian, the new Savoy is 
German, the Carlton and His Majesty's Theatre are 
Parisian. 

But if London's completed new buildings are not satis- 
factory, their preparations are. There is nothing out of 
Meryon's etchings more impressive than our contractors' 



ARCHITECTURAL CONTRASTS 7 

giant cranes can be — fixed high above the houses on their 
scaffolding, with sixty vertical yards of chain hanging from 
their great arms. Against an evening sky, with a little 
smoke from the engine purpling in the dying sun's rays, 
and the mist beginning to blur or submerge the surround- 
ing houses, these cranes and scaffoldings have an effect of 
curious unreality, a hint even of Babylon or Nineveh, a 
suggestion at any rate of all majestic building and builders 
in history. London has no more interesting or picturesque 
sight than this. 

Among the best pubhc buildings of recent days are the 
National Portrait Gallery, seen as one walks down the 
Charing Cross Road, and the Institute of Painters in Water 
Colours in Piccadilly, and the Record Office in Chancery 
Lane. The South Kensington School of Science is good, so 
square and solid and grave is it, albeit perhaps a little too 
foreign with its long and (in London) quite useless but 
superbly decorative and beautiful loggia; but what can 
we say of the Imperial Institute and the Natural History 
Museum close by, except that they are ambitious and sym- 
metrical — the ideal of the Kindergarten box of bricks 
carried out to its highest power ? 

It is as though London had been to a feast of architec- 
ture and stolen the scraps. She has everything. She has 
Queen Anne's Mansions, that hideous barracks, and she 
has Standen's in Jermyn Street, which is a Florentine 
palazzo; she has St. John's, Westminster, with its four un- 
sightly bell-towers, and St. Dunstan's-in-the-East with its 
indescribably graceful spire; she has Charing's Eleanor 
Cross and the Albert Memorial ; she has Westminster Hall 
and the new Roman Catholic Cathedral ; she has Cannon 
Street Station and the Heralds' College ; she has the terra 
cotta Prudential Office in Holborn and within a few yards 



8 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

of it the medieval fagade of Staple Inn; she has Euston 
Station and the new Ecclesiastical Commissioners' offices 
at Westminster; she has Park Lane and Bedford Row; 
she has the Astor Estate Office and Frascati's; she has 
Chelsea Hospital and Whitehall Court ; she has the Gaiety 
Theatre and Spence's in St. Paul's Churchyard with its 
plain stone gables ; she has the white severity of the Athe- 
naeum Club and Waring's new premises in Oxford Street, 
a gay enough building, but one that requires the spectator 
to be a hundred yards away — which he cannot be. 

London has learnt nothing from Philadelphia or Paris of 
the value of regularity, and if she can help it she never 
will. I suppose that Regent Street and Park Crescent 
were her last efforts on a large scale to get unity into 
herself, and now she is allowing the Regent Street curve to 
be broken by the new Piccadilly Hotel. But since the 
glory of London is her disorder, it does not matter. Noth- 
ing will change that. 

The narrowness and awkwardness of London streets are 
a perpetual reminder of the Englishman's incapacity or 
unwillingness to look ahead. In no other city in the world 
would it have been permitted to build two theatres and the 
Coliseum in a street so narrow as St. Martin's Lane, as 
happened only the other day. Nowhere else is traffic al- 
lowed to be so continuously and expensively congested at 
the whim of private companies. In the city itself, in the 
busy lanes off Cheapside for instance, where waggons are 
sometimes kept eight hours before they can be extricated, 
this narrowness means the daily loss of thousands of 
pounds. London's chance to become a civilised city was 
probably lost for ever at Waterloo. Had Wellington been 
defeated, carriages might now be running four abreast down 
Fleet Street. Yet as neither Napoleon nor Baron Hauss- 



LONDON HOMES 9 

man ever came our way, we must act accordingly ; and the 
railway companies are still building on their branch lines 
arches wide enough to carry only a single pair of rails. 

But in spite of architectural whimsies, there are in no 
other city of the world so many houses in which one would 
like to live as in London. In spite of our studious efforts 
to arrange that every room shall have one or more draughts 
in it : in spite of our hostility to hot water pipes and our 
affection for dark and dreary basements ; it is generally 
agreed that the English house can come nearer to the idea 
of home than that of any other people, and there can be 
no doubt that the English home is to be found in its per- 
fection in I/ondon. Even as I write the memory of friendly 
houses, modern and Georgian and of even earlier date, in 
various parts of England, rises before me: houses over 
which the spirit of welcome broods, and within which are 
abundant fires, and lavender-scented sheets, and radiant 
almost laughing cleanliness, and that sense of quiet effi- 
cient order that is perhaps not the least charming char- 
acteristic of an English country house. Yet it is without 
treachery to these homes that one commends the comfort- 
able London house as the most attractive habitation in the 
world; for a house, I take it, should be in the midst of 
men, and in spite of so many blemishes which no one feels 
so much as the mistress of a country house — and the great- 
est of which is dirt — the London home is the homeliest of 
all. Perhaps a touch of grime is not unnecessary. Per- 
haps houses can be too clean for the truest human dailiness. 

While walking about London I have noticed so many 
houses in which I could live happily; and indeed to look 
for these is not a bad device to make walking in London 
tolerable — to take the place of the thousand and one dis- 
tractions and allurements of the walk in the country. One 



10 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

becomes a house-collector: marking down those houses 
which possibly by some unexpected turn of Fortune's wheel 
one might take, or which one wants to enter on friendly 
terms, or which one ought once to have lived in when needs 
were simpler. 

Holland House is, of course, too splendid: one could 
never live there; but there is, for /Sample, at 16, South 
Audley Street, a corner house where one would be quite 
happy, with double windows very prettily j^laced and paned, 
and a front door with glass panels quite ak if it were in the 
country and within its own grounds, through which may be 
seen the hall and a few paintings and some old black oak. 
I expect that Mr. Beit's house in Park Lane is fairly com- 
fortable, although that also is too large; and the low 
white house standing back in Curzon Street is probably 
too ambitious too ; but there is a house at the corner of 
Cheyne Walk and Beaufort Street, in whose top windows 
over-looking the grey and pearl river one could be very 
serene. Other Cheyne Walk houses are very appealing 
too: No. 15, with a sundial, and No. 6, square and grave, 
and No. 2, with its little loggia, and Old Swan House, that 
riparian palace. If however I was to overlook the Thames 
I think I would choose one of the venerable residences on 
the walls of the Tower, from which one could observe not 
only the river but, at only one remove, the sea itself. 

I have sometimes amused myself by jotting down the 
addresses of the houses I have liked, intending to find out 
who lived in them ; but the London Directory seems to be 
hopelessly beyond the reach of anyone not in an ofiice or a 
public-house. But I do happen to know who it is that 
owns some of the most desirable houses in my bag. I 
know, for example, the pretty white and green house where 
the author of Peter Pan lives; I know that the little low 




P Q 

fa * 
o « 



Oh S 



THE HOUSE OPPOSITE 11 

house facing St. James's Park by Queen Anne's Gate 
belongs to Sir James Knowles ; and there is a beautiful 
white house on the south side of Hyde Park, in Kensington 
Gore, — an old house within its own gates, with a garden 
behind it, which I have discovered to belong to a certain 
Lord ; but everyone that I know seems to want that. 

If ever I were found in these houses it would not be 
for theft, but to see if their Chippendale was really worthy 
of them, and how blue their china was, and if they had 
any good pictures. Perhaps many a burglar has begun 
purely as an amateur in furniture and decoration. 

I rather think it is Charles Kingsley who says, in one 
of the grown-up digressions in Water Babies, that the 
beauty of the house opposite is of more consequence than 
that of the house one lives in : because one rarely sees the 
house one is in, but is always conscious of the other. 
Kingsley (if it was Kingsley) was good at that kind of 
hard practical remark; but I fancy that this one means 
nothing, because the kind of person who would like to 
live in an ugly house would not care whether the house 
opposite was beautiful or not. I, who always want too 
much, would choose above all things to live in a beautiful 
house with no house opposite; yet since that is hardly 
likely to be, I would choose to live in a beautiful house 
with long white blinds that shut out the house opposite 
(beautiful or ugly) and yet did not exclude what it amuses 
us in London to call light. 

Not that the house opposite would really bother me 
very much. In fact, the usual charge that is brought 
against it in this city — that it encourages organ-grinders 
— is to my mind a virtue. London without organ-grinders 
would not be London; and one likes a city to be true 
to its character, good or bad. Also there is hardly any 



12 A WANDERER IN LOND'ON 

tune except our National Anthem of which I can honestly 
say I am tired; and as often as one comes to the conclu- 
sion that one can endure even that no longer, it justifies 
itself and recovers its popularity by bringing some tiresome 
evening to an end. 

In naming desirable houses I am thinking chiefly of 
the houses with individual charm: old houses, for the 
most part, which have been made modern in their acces- 
sories by their owners, but which retain externally their 
ancient gravity or beauty — such as you see in Queen 
Anne's Gate, or the Master of the Temple's house, or 
Aubrey House on Campden Hill. I am thinking chiefly 
of these old comely houses, and of the very few new 
houses by architects of taste, such as Mr. Astor's exquisite 
offices on the Embankment — one of the most satisfying 
of London's recent edifices, with thought and care and 
patience and beauty in every inch of it, whether in the 
stone or the wood or the iron: possessing indeed not a 
little of the thoroughness and single-mindedness that 
Ruskin looked for in the cathedrals of France. 

But a few desirable houses of the middle or early-nine- 
teenth century one has marked approvingly too — such as 
Thackeray's house in Kensington Palace Gardens, that 
discreet and almost private avenue of vast mansions, each 
large enough and imposing enough to stand in its own 
park in the country : but here packed close together — 
not quite in the Park Lane huddle, but very nearly so — 
and therefore conveying only an impaired impression of 
their true amplitude. (It is of course the houses of a city 
that give one the most rapid impression of its prosperity 
or poverty. To walk in the richer residential quarters 
of London — in Mayfair and Belgravia, South Kensing- 
ton and Bayswater and Regent's Park, is to receive an over- 



LITTLE HOUSES 13 

whelming proof of the gigantic wealth of this people. 
Take Queen's Gate alone: the houses in it mount to the 
skies and every one represents an income of five figures. 
The only one of them, however, that I covet is at the 
corner of Imperial Institute Road — a modern Queen 
Anne mansion of the best type.) 

Thackeray's old house in Young Street spreads its bow 
windows even more alluringly than the new one ; but there 
is a little house next to that, hiding shyly behind ever- 
greens, where I am sure I could be comfortable. This 
house — it is only a cottage, really — has one of London's 
few wet, bird-haunted lawns. It is so retiring and whisper- 
ing that the speculative builder has utterly overlooked it 
all these years. Another retiring house that I should like 
to have is that barred and deserted house in Upper Cheyne 
Row, Chelsea, and I could be happy in Swan Walk, Chel- 
sea, too, and at No. 14 or 15 Great College Street, West- 
minster. 

Of the exceedingly little houses which one could really 
inhabit there are several on Campden Hill. There is one 
in Aubrey Walk which once I could have been very happy 
in: I am afraid it is too small now. It could be moved 
bodily one night anywhere: a wheelbarrow would be 
enough — a wheelbarrow and a pair of strong arms. It is 
so small and compact that it might be transferred to the 
stage of Peter Pan as a present for Wendy. I go that way 
continually just to look at it. And there is the White 
House with a verandah at Kensington Gate which has been 
built round by new mansions so as to be almost invisible ; 
and, best of all perhaps — certainly so in spring — there is 
the secluded keeper's lodge in Kensington Gardens over- 
looking the Serpentine. 

The most outrageously unreal new miniature house in 



14 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

London is not on the outskirts at all but in the city itself 
— in Fetter Lane in fact, I mean the lodge in the garden 
of the Record Office. This httle architectural whimsy 
might be the abode of an urban fairy or gnome, some 
minute relation of Gog or Magog, or even a cousin of the 
Griffin at Temple Bar. It is charming enough to have 
such a tenant ; and whoever lives there believes nobly in 
heat, for the chimney is immense. And the quaintest of 
the old miniature London houses is that residence for the 
sexton which is built against the wall of St. Bartholomew 
the Great in Smithfield — a very Elizabethan doll's house. 

But this architectural digression has taken us far from 
Piccadilly and the crossing at Hamilton Place where we 
were standing when my pen ran away. After Hamilton 
Place the clubs begin, one of the first being the largest of 
those for women of which London now has so many, with 
their smoking rooms all complete. One would like to 
hear the Iron Duke on this development of modern life. 
"Smoke and be " would he say.? 

To me a more interesting structure than any Piccadilly 
club, whether it be for men or women, is the curious raised 
platform on the Green Park side of the road at this point, 
which was set there by a kindly observer some years ago, 
who noticed that porters walking west with parcels were a 
good deal distressed after the hill, and so provided them 
with a resting place for their burdens while they recovered 
breath. The time has gone by for its use, no one in these 
parts now bearing anything on the shoulder, omnibuses 
being so many and so cheap : but the platform remains as 
a monument to pretty thoughtfulness. 

When I first came to London, Piccadilly still had its 
goat. I remember meeting it on the pavement one day in 
1902, opposite Hamilton Terrace, and wondering how it 



OLD Q 15 

got there, and why the people, usually so curious about the 
unusual, were taking so little notice of such a phenomenon, 
as it seemed to me. It must have been soon after that it 
died and, with true London carelessness, was not replaced. 
London never replaces anything. 

Were it not for the traffic — omnibuses and cabs all day 
and until long after midnight, and in the small hours 
traction engines rumbling into Covent Garden with wag- 
gon loads of cabbages and vegetables from the Thames 
valley — Piccadilly opposite the Green Park would be the 
perfect place for a house. But it is too noisy. None the 
less residences there are, between the clubs, many of them 
either having interesting associations of their own, or 
standing upon historic sites : such as Gloucester House, 
at the east corner of Hamilton Place, where the Elgin 
marbles, which are now in the British Museum, jBrst dwelt 
after their ravishment from the Acropolis ; and Nos. 138 
and 139, next it, which stand upon the site of the abode 
of the disreputable "Old Q" who posed to three genera- 
tions as the model debauchee, and by dint of receiving 
9,340 visits of two hours each from his doctor during the 
last seven years of his life, and a bath of milk every morn- 
ing, contrived to keep alive and in fairly good condition until 
he was eighty-six. It was in the half of Old Q's house 
which afterwards was called No. 139, and was pulled down 
in 1839 and rebuilt, that Byron was living in 1816 when 
his wife left him for ever, for reasons which a very limited 
portion of the world has recently been favoured with by 
the Earl of Lovelace. Lord Palmerston for some years 
occupied what is now the Naval and Military (or " In and 
Out") club; and Miss Mellon the actress, who married 
Mr. Coutts the banker, lived at No. 1 Stratton Street, 
which has long been the residence of the Baroness Burdett- 



16 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Coutts. For the rest, I give way to the communicative 
and perhaps imaginative 'bus driver, who in his turn is 
giving way to the chauffeur, who cannot tell anyone any- 
thing, partly because he is the man at the wheel, and partly 
because he is not within speaking distance of any of his 
fares, and partly because he is an engineer and a modern, 
and therefore not interested in the interesting. The iron 
law of utilitarianism which called him into being is the 
foe of so many of the little amenities of life. 

And so, passing Devonshire House's rampart, we come 
to Berkeley Street, and the strolling part of the walk is 
over. Anyone who is run over at this corner — and that 
is no difficult matter — will have the satisfaction of know- 
ing that he shares his fate with the author of The Pleasures 
of Memory. Being only a little past eighty at the time, 
Rogers survived the shock many years. 

This reminds me that the infrequency with which Lon- 
doners are run over is one of the most amazing things in 
this city. To ride in a hansom or a motor car in any busy 
street, is, after a short time, to be convinced that the vehicle 
has some such power of attraction over human beings as 
a magnet has over needles. Men rise up from nowhere 
apparently with no other purpose but to court death, and 
yet all seem to view the advancing danger with something 
of the same air of astonishment as they would be entitled 
to assume were they to meet a railway train in Kensington 
Gardens. It seems to be a perpetual surprise to the 
Londoner that horses and carriages are making any use of 
his roadways. 




PICCADILLY LOOKING WEST 



CHAPTER II 

ROMANCE AND THE WALLACE PICTURES 

Dull Streets — London and London — The Rebuilder again — Old 
Paris — The Heart of the Matter — A Haunt of Men — External 
Romance — Dickens and Stevenson — The True Wandering Knight 

— Cab Drivers — The Magic Twopence — A Word to the Fair — 
The Beautiful Serpentine — London Fogs — Whistler — The Look- 
out down the River — Park Lane — Tyburn — Famous Malefactors 

— The Fortunate John Smith — The Wallace Collection — Rem- 
brandt and Velasquez — Andrea del Sarto — Heresies about the 
Fete Champetre School — Our Dutch Masters — Metsu's Favourite 
Sitter — Guardi and Bonington — Miniatures and Sevres 

THE more I wander about London the less wander- 
able in, for a stranger, does it seem to be. We who 
live in it and necessarily must pass through one street in 
order to get to another are not troubled by squalor and 
monotony; but what can the traveller make of it who 
comes to London bent upon seeing interesting things ? 
What can he make of the wealthy deserts of Bayswater? 
of the grimy Vauxhall Bridge Road ? of the respectable 
aridity of the Cromwell Road, which goes on for ever ? of 
the grey monotony of Gower Street ? What can he make 
of the hundreds of square miles of the East End ? And 
what, most of all, of the interminable districts of small 
houses which his train will bisect on every line by which he 
can re-enter London after one of his excursions to the 
country? Nothing. He will not try twice, 
c 17 



18 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

And yet these poorer districts are London in the fullest 
sense of the word, although for the most part when we 
say London we mean the Strand and Piccadilly. But the 
Strand and Piccadilly might go and it would not really 
matter : few persons would suffer extremely ; whereas were 
Poplar or Bermondsey, Kentish Town or Homerton, to fall 
in ruins or be burnt, thousands and thousands of Lon- 
doners would have lost all and be utterly destitute. 

It perhaps comes to this, that there is no one London at 
all. London is a country containing many towns, of which 
a little central area of theatres and music halls, restaurants 
and shops, historic buildings and hotels, is the capital ; and 
it is this capital that strangers come to see. For the most 
part it is this capital with which the present pages are 
concerned. London for our purposes dwindles down to a 
very small area where most of her visitors spend all their 
time — the Embankment, Trafalgar Square, and Picca- 
dilly, Regent Street and the British Museum, the Strand 
and Ludgate Hill, the Bank and the Tower. That is 
London to the ordinary inquisitive traveller. Almost 
everything that English provincials, Americans and other 
foreigners come to London to see, is there. 

It is not as if leaving the beaten paths were likely to lead 
to the discovery of any profusion of curious or picturesque 
corners. A few years ago this might have been so, but as I 
have said, a tidal wave of utilitarianism has lately rolled 
over the city and done irreparable mischief. London no 
longer offers much harvest for the gleaner of odds and ends 
of old architecture, quaint gateways, unexpected gables. 
Such treasures as she still retains in the teeth of the re- 
builder are well known : such as Staple Inn and the York 
Water Gate, Melhuish's shop in Fetter Lane, a house or 
two in Chelsea (mostly doomed), the city churches, a corner 



A GABLE IN PARIS 19 

or two near Smithfield, and so forth. She has nothing, for 
example, comparable with the Faubourg St. Antoine in 
Paris, where one may be rewarded every minute by some 
beautiful relic of the past ; and where suddenly last year I 
came, in the Rue Montorgeuil, on a stable yard, all dark- 
ness and sombre mystery, beneath a gable of gigantic 
beams, all ready for Rembrandt to set the Holy Family in 
its midst, or for Meryon to make terrible with a few strokes 
of his sinister needle. I have had no such fortune here. 
London, one would say, should be first among cities where 
symbols of the past are held sacred ; but in reality it is the 
last. 

Hence I am only too conscious as we walk up Park Lane 
(having returned to No. 1 London to begin again), that we 
shall be wandering in streets that present little or no 
attraction to the stranger from the shires or the pilgrim 
from over seas. For beyond some mildly interesting archi- 
tecture Mayfair streets can offer nothing to anyone that is 
not interested in their past inhabitants. Better to have 
stuck to Piccadilly or Oxford Street, with their busy pave- 
ments : much better, perhaps, and at the same time to have 
accepted the fact that London is before all things a city of 
living men and women. 

That is what the traveller must come to see — London's 
men and women, her millions of men and women. If he 
would eat, drink and be merry, he must go elsewhere ; if he 
would move in beautiful and spacious thoroughfares, he 
must go elsewhere ; if he would see crumbling architecture 
or stately palaces, he must go elsewhere ; but if he has any 
interest in the human hive, this is the place. He can study 
it here day and night for a year, and there will still be vast 
tracts unknown to him. 

For a great city of great age and a history of extraordin- 



20 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

ary picturesqueness and importance, London is nearly desti- 
tute of the external properties of romance. But although, 
except here and there — and those in the more placid and 
law-abiding quarters, such as the Inns of Court — the dark 
gateway and the medieval gable are no more, I suppose 
that no city has so appealed to the imagination of the 
romantic novelist. The very contrast between the dull 
prosaic exterior of a London street and the passions that 
may be at work within is part of the allurement. 

It was undoubtedly Dickens who first introduced Eng- 
lishmen to London as a capital of mystery and fun, tragedy 
and eccentricity : it was Dickens who discovered London's 
melodramatic wealth. But Dickens did not invent any- 
thing. It was Stevenson in his New Arabian Nights who 
may be said to have invented the romantic possibilities of 
new streets. Dickens needed an odd corner before he set 
an odd figure in it; the Wilderness, for instance, came 
before Quilp, the Barbican before Sim Tappertit; but 
Stevenson, by simply transferring the Baghdad formula 
to London, in an instant transformed, say, Campden Hill 
and Hampstead, even Bedford Park and Sydenham Hill, 
into regions of daring and delightful possibilities. After 
reading the New Arabian Nights the tamest residence 
holds potentialities; and not a tobacconist but may be a 
prince in disguise, not a hansom cabman but may bear a 
roving commission to inveigle you to an adventure. 

In ordinary life to-day, even in London among her 
millions, adventures are, I must admit, singularly few, and 
such as occur mostly follow rather familiar lines ; but since 
the New Arabian Nights there has always been hope, and 
that is not a little in this world. 

Even without Stevenson I should, I trust, have realised 
something of the London hansom driver's romantic quality. 




THE LADY WITH A FAN 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY VELASQUEZ IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION 



THE ROMANTIC CABMAN 21 

He is the true Wandering Knight of this city. He does 
not in the old way exactly hang the reins over his horse's 
neck, but he is as vacant of personal impulse as if he did. 
His promptings come all from without — not from the 
horse, but fi-om the fare. There he sits, careless, motion- 
less (save for quick eyes), apathetic. He may sit thus for 
an hour, for two, for three, unnoticed ; he may be hailed 
the next moment. A distant whistle, an umbrella raised 
a hundred yards away, and he is transformed into life. 
He may be wanted to drive only to a near station — or to 
a distant suburb. One minute he has no purpose in his 
brain : the next he is informed by one and one only — 
to get to St. Pancras or Notting Hill, the theatre or the 
Bank, the Houses of Parliament or Scotland Yard, in the 
shortest space of time. And this romantic is the servant 
of everyone who has a shilling — bishop or coiner, actress 
or M.P. 

So, it may be said, is the cab driver of Paris and Berlin, 
of New York and Glasgow. But these have not the 
hansom. It is the hansom that makes the romance : the 
odd shape of it, the height of the driver above the crowd, 
the deft celerity of it, together with that dashing adven- 
turous air which so many hansom drivers possess and no 
driver of a four-wheeler ever aspired to. Good hansom 
drivers when they die go I know not where ; but bad ones 
undoubtedly are condemned to the box seats of four- 
wheelers. 

Disraeli's picturesque simile of the hansom — the gondola 
of London — is now I fear obsolete ; for the true gondola 
of London is the electric brougham, which steals past in 
the night, so black and silent and secret, on its muffled 
wheels. On a wet night, when the asphalt streams gold, 
only a mandolin is needed to complete the illusion. 



22 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

In my experience cabmen are not only the true romantics 
but are also the pleasantest of London's public servants. 
Now and then one meets a pessimist or a capitalist, but for 
the most part they are genial and honest : considering the 
uncomfortable and even dangerous conditions of their 
exposed life, in London weather, nobly so. The only com- 
plaint I have against them is that they have ceased to know 
the way. Very rarely does a cabman now take the shortest 
or best route, and once, I fancy, they always did. Against 
their loyal little horses I have no complaint whatever, the 
brave little creatures, so much of whose dull life is waiting, 
waiting. The trot of the London cabhorse is said to be 
the shortest sharpest trot in the world — an adaptation 
of its natural movement to our slippery pavements. My 
experience is that after the first five minutes all cabhorses 
are equally good, although some certainly start badly. 

The secret of successful dealing with cabmen was whis- 
pered to me years ago by a wise man, and I have never had 
trouble since. "In addition to the legal fare," said he, 
"give them twopence. It is not enough to corrupt them 
or make them harshly exorbitant with others ; it is so small 
that you will not feel it ; it shows the cabman that you wish 
him well, while it may, if you like, flatter you into a good 
opinion of yourself as a man who has generous impulses. 
If you give a cabman sixpence above his fare he knows 
you to be a fool and will probably demand a shilling; if 
you give him his just fare and twopence extra he recognises 
a gentleman." 

I commend the policy to others, especially to women, 
who seem to have a special gift for bringing out the worst 
side of the cabman's character. Lacking any instinctive 
knowledge of distance, and being compelled by circum- 
stances very often actually to exercise that economy of 



THE FRIENDLY SHELTER 23 

which their husbands only talk, they are peculiarly at a dis- 
advantage when they alight from a cab. In Paris the 
taximeter comes to their rescue; but the taximeter is far 
too sensible a device for London, and so the agony of pay- 
ment must be endured, with the cabman's eyes watching 
from above as a hovering hawk watches a shrew mouse. I 
believe that the twopenny bonus would save the situation, 
for the cabman would at least know that something was 
intended, and that may be all he wants to know. His re- 
sentment is often directed less against the smallness of the 
fare than the meanness (as he thinks it) at the back of it. 

The cabman has still another claim upon one's gratitude 
when all has been said for his romantic calling and his 
signal usefulness in driving one hither and thither. After 
half-past twelve, the hour at which the law decrees that 
no ordinary Londoner shall be fed in any licensed house 
except a club, the cabman can become a friend indeed. 
Some of the best bacon and eggs and hot tea that ever I 
tasted have been placed before me in a Cabmen's Shelter 
at three in the morning. One meal in particular I re- 
member — in Pont Street, last summer. As we ate at the 
little narrow table (sardines first, and then bacon and eggs) 
I enlarged to the cabman on the merits of the taximeter 
system in Paris, while the light grew stronger and stronger 
without, and the sparrows chirped on the roof. But unless 
one goes in with a cabman, as his friend, these shelters are 
barred and there is only the coffee stall. There, however, 
the hard-boiled eggs are always good, whatever the com- 
pany or weather may be. 

But this talk of cabmen has taken us far from romance, 
and I want to say one other word about romantic London 
before we really enter Park Lane. Beneath one of her 
mists or light fogs London can become the most mysterious 



24 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

and beautiful city in the world. I know of nothing more 
bewitchingly lovely than the Serpentine on a still misty 
evening — when it is an unruffled lake of dim pearl-grey 
liquid, such stuff as sleep is made of. St. James's Park at 
dusk on a winter's afternoon, seen from the suspension 
bridge, with all the lights of the Government offices re- 
flected in its water, has less mystery but more romance. It 
might be the lake before an enchanted castle. And while 
speaking of evening effects I must not forget the steam 
which escapes in fairy clouds from the huge chimney off 
Davies Street, just behind the Bond Street Tube Station. 
On the evening of a clear day this vapour can be the most 
exquisite violet and purple, transfiguring Oxford Street. 
To artists the fog is London's best friend. Not the black 
fog, but the other. For there are two distinct London 
fogs — the fog that chokes and blinds, and the fog that 
shrouds. The fog that enters into every corner of the 
house and coats all the metal work with a dark slime, and 
sets us coughing and rubbing our eyes — for that there is 
nothing to say. It brings with it too much dirt, too much 
unhealthiness, for any kind of welcome to be possible. 
" Hell is a city very much like London " I quoted to myself 
in the last of such fogs, as I groped by the railings of the 
Park in the Bayswater Road. The traffic, which I could 
not see, was rumbling past, and every now and then a man, 
close by but invisible, would call out a word of warning, or 
someone would ask in startled tones where he was. The 
hellishness of it consisted in being of life and yet not in it 
— a stranger in a muffled land. It is bad enough for 
ordinary wayfarers in such a fog as that ; but one has only 
to imagine what it is to be in charge of a horse and cart, 
to see how much worse one's lot might be. 

But the other fog — the fog that veils but does not 







o « 

3 g 

< 2 

CO CL, 



WHISTLER'S DISCOVERY 25 

obliterate, the fog that softens but does not soil, the fog 
whose beautifying properties Whistler may be said to have 
discovered — that can be a delight and a joy. Seen through 
this gentle mist London becomes a city of romance. All 
that is ugly and hard in her architecture, all that is dingy 
and repellent in her colour, disappears. " Poor buildings," 
w^rote Whistler, who watched their transformation so often 
from his Chelsea home, " lose themselves in the dim sky, 
and the tall chimneys become cam'pamli, and the ware- 
houses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs 
in the heavens." 

I have said that it was Dickens who discovered the 
London of eccentricity, London as the abode of the odd 
and the quaint, and Stevenson who discovered London 
as a home of romance. It was Whistler who discovered 
London as a city of fugitive, mysterious beauty. For 
decades the London fog had been a theme for vituperation 
and sarcasm: it needed this sensitive American-Parisian 
to show us that what to the commonplace man was a foe 
and a matter for rage, to the artist was a friend. Every- 
one knows about it now. 

Fogs have never been quite the same to me since I was 
shown a huge chimney on the south side of the Thames, 
and was told that it belonged to the furnaces that supply 
London offices with electric light; and that whenever 
the weather seems to suggest a fog, a man is sent to the 
top of this chimney to look down the river and give notice 
of the first signs of the enemy rolling up. Then, as his 
news is communicated, the furnaces are re-stoked, and 
extra pressure is obtained that the coming darkness may 
be fought and the work of counting-houses not interrupted. 
All sentinels, all men on the look-out, belong to romance; 
and from his great height this man peering over the river 



26 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

shipping and the myriad roofs for a thickening of the 
horizon has touched even a black London fog with romance 
for me. I think of his straining eyes, his call of warning, 
those roaring fires. . . . 

Park Lane is the Mecca of the successful financier. 
A house in Park Lane is a London audience's symbol for 
ostentatious wealth, just as supper with an actress is its 
symbol for gilt-edged depravity; yet it is just as possible 
to live in Park Lane without being either a plutocrat or 
a vulgarian, as it is to be dull and virtuous in the few 
minutes after the play that are allowed for supper at a 
restaurant before the light is switched off — to plunge his 
guests in darkness being the London restaurateur's tact- 
ful reminder that closing time has arrived. 

Park Lane is interesting in that every house in it has 
some personal character; while a few are beautiful. Of 
Mr. Beit's I have already spoken. It might have been 
built to stand among trees in its own deer park : a remark 
that applies with even more propriety to Dorchester House 
(now the home of the American Embassy), and to London- 
derry House, and to Grosvenor House, all of which are 
treasuries of Old Masters, and all of which quietly take 
their place in this street almost as submissively as the 
component parts of a suburban terrace. Such natural 
meetings of architectural incompatibles is one of London's 
most curious characteristics. There are, I believe, in Park 
Lane no two houses alike; but now and then one comes 
upon one more unlike the others than one would have 
thought possible — as for example that richly carved stone 
facade at the end of Tilney Street, a gem in its way, but 
very, very unexpected here. 

Before it was Park Lane and wealthy this pleasant 
thoroughfare — half-town and half -country, catching all 



TYBURN'S HEROES 27 

the sun that London can offer in summer and winter — was 
known as Tyburn Lane, Tyburn Tree, where highwaymen 
and other malefactors danced upon air, being at the north 
end of it, where Connaught Place now stands: Oxford 
Street in those days being Tyburn Street, and much of 
Bayswater Tyburnia. The last hanging at Tyburn was 
in 1783, after which the scene was moved to the front of 
Newgate (now also no more). We have the grace to do 
such deeds in secret to-day; but nothing in our social 
history is more astonishing than the deliberateness with 
which such grace came upon us. 

Tyburn was the end of a few brave fellows, and many 
others. Perkin Warbeck, who claimed the throne, died 
here, and Fenton, who killed Buckingham ; Jack Sheppard 
very properly had a crowd numbering 200,000, but 
Jonathan Wild, who picked the parson's pocket on the 
way to the gallows, had more ; Mrs. Brownrigg's hanging 
was very popular, but among the masses through whom 
Sixteen-stringed Jack wended his way, with a bouquet 
from a lady friend in his hand, were probably more sym- 
pathisers than censors. The notorious Dr. Dodd, in 
1777, also drew an immense concourse. 

These curious Londoners (Hogarth has drawn them) 
once at any rate had more (or less) than they were expect- 
ing, when, in 1705, John Smith, a burglar, was reprieved 
after he had been hanging for full fifteen minutes, and 
being immediately cut down, came to himself " to the great 
admiration of the spectators" (although baulked of their 
legitimate entertainment), and was quickly removed by his 
friends, enraptured or otherwise, to begin a second, if not 
a new, life. 

And here, having come to Oxford Street before I in- 
tended, let us forget malefactors and the gallows in walk- 




28 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

ing through the Wallace Collection at Hertford House, 
which is close by, and gain at the same time some idea of 
London's wealth of great painting: deflecting just for a 
moment to look at the very charming raised garden in the 
Italian manner which has just been ingeniously built over 
a subterranean electric light station in Duke Street. This 
is quite one of the happiest of new architectural fancies in 
London, with its two domed gateways, its stone terraces 
and its cypresses. One might almost be on Isola Bella. 

Opinions would necessarily differ as to what is the great- 
est picture on the walls of Hertford House, but I suppose 
that from the same half dozen or so most of the good critics 
would select that one. It is not in me to support my 
choice with professional reasons, but I should be inclined 
to name Rembrandt's "Parable of the Unmerciful Ser- 
vant. " Near it come the same painter's portraits of Jan 
Pellicorne and his wife, and Velasquez' "Portrait of a 
Spanish Lady," sometimes called "La Femme a I'Even- 
tail," of which I for one never tire, whether I think of it 
as a piece of marvellous painting or as a sad and fascinating 
personality. 

But there are also such masterpieces as Andrea del 
Sarto's "Virgin and Child with St. John the Baptist and 
two Angels," notable for the beauty of it and the maternal 
sweetness and kindliness of it, and the quiet ease of the 
brush. It is not perhaps quite so lovely as a rather similar 
picture belonging to Lord Battersea, which was exhibited 
in London some ten years ago, and which, after the same 
painter's portrait of the young sculptor in the National 
Gallery, is the most exquisite of his paintings that I have 
seen in England ; but it is very beautiful. And in the 
largest of the Wallace rooms may also be seen Frans Hals' 
" Laughing Cavalier, " who does not really laugh at all but 



THE CHARM OF THE CUMULUS 29 

smiles a faint mischievous smile that I dare swear worked 
more havoc than any laughter could. Here also is Murillo's 
"Charity of St. Thomas of Villanueva" (No. 97), with its 
suggestion of Andrea del Sarto in the beautiful painting 
of the mother and children to the right of it; and two 
charming Nicolas Maes': wistful, delicate, smiHng boys 
with hawks on their wrists; and several other glorious 
Velasquez'; and Vandyck's superb "Phillipe le Roy, 
Seigneur de Ravels" (No. 94), with his Lady (No. 79); 
and one of Rubens' spreading landscapes; and two of 
Luini's exquisite Madonnas ; and some feathery Hobbe- 
mas; and Gainsborough's "'Perdita' Robinson"; and 
a number of Reynolds at his best, of which I would carry 
away either "Mrs. Hoare with her Infant Son," or "Mrs. 
Nesbitt with a Dove " ; and two of the best portraits by 
Cornelius de Vos I have seen; and the sweet and subtle 
Mierevelt that is reproduced opposite page 4. I name 
these only, but there is not one picture in the large room that 
does not repay individual study. 

Before leaving it, I would say that, without going into 
any kind of rapture, I have always been very fond of 
Adrian Van der Velde's " Departure of Jacob into Egypt " 
(No. 80), partly for the interesting drama and reality of it 
all, and partly for its noble cumulus cloud, since no picture 
with a cumulus cloud painted at all like life ever fails to 
catch and hold my eye ; and with this picture I associate in 
memory the Berchem on the opposite wall, " Coast Scene 
with Figures" (No. 25), for a kind of relationship which 
they bear the one to the other. 

In Room XVII, which unites the great gallery with the 
Fete Galante school, I would mention the magnificent 
Claude — " Italian Landscape " (No. 114) — and the abso- 
lutely lovely Cuyp on the opposite wall (No. 138), "River 



30 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Scene with View of Dort," only more beautiful than the 
"River Scene" (No. 54) of the same master in the large 
room. The Dort picture has an evening quietude ap- 
proached only by William Van der Velde the younger, in 
his " Ships in a Calm," in Room XIV, and by Berchem, in 
his " Landscape with Figures " (No. 183), all misty gold and 
glamour, in the same room. 

Among the pictures in Room XV that I make a point 
of returning to again and again, one of the first is "A 
Fountain at Constantinople" (No. 312) by Narcisse Virgile 
Diaz de la Peiia, commonly called Diaz, who lived at 
Barbizon, and was the dear friend of Theodore Rousseau, 
the painter of No. 283, and of Jean Francois Millet, who is 
not represented either here or at the National Gallery. 
Exactly what the fascination of this Turkish scene is I 
cannot define, but it affects me curiously and deeply, and 
always in the same way. This room is given up to French 
painters. Decamps being represented here better, I believe, 
than in any collection, if not so numerously as in the 
Thomy-Thierret gallery at the Louvre. Personally I could 
wish for more of Corot and Rousseau and Diaz, and less of 
Decamps, although his "Villa Doria Pamfili" (No. 267) 
always draws me to it and keeps me there. Meissonier too 
I could exchange for something more romantic. One Corot 
there is, and one Rousseau, both very fine, both inhabited 
by their own light; but there is no Millet. Having seen 
the Fete Galante school in all its luxuriance in Rooms 
XVIII, XIX and XX and on the staircase, one can per- 
haps understand why the peasants of Barbizon's greatest 
and simplest son have been excluded. 

As to the Fete Galante school, there is a word to be 
said. If one has any feeling but one of intense satisfaction 
in connection with the Wallace treasure house, it is a hint 



METSU'S FRIEND 31 

of regret that the collectors were so catholic. I would 
have had them display a narrower sympathy. I resent 
this interest in the art of Boucher and Lancret, Pater and, 
although not to the same extent, Watteau and Greuze. 
After Rembrandt and Velasquez, Andrea del Sarto and 
Reynolds, such artificialities almost hurt one. Each to 
his taste, of course, and I am merely recording mine ; but 
as a general proposition it may be remarked that great art 
should not be too closely companioned by great artfulness. 
On the other hand there is much to be said for catholicity ; 
and I would include one Fragonard in every gallery if only 
for the sound of his exquisite name. 

Rooms XIV and XIII belong to the Dutch, and are 
hung with small pictures by great craftsmen — Rembrandt, 
with a curiously fascinating yellow landscape (No. 229) ; 
Terburg, who is at his happiest in the "Lady Reading a 
Letter" (No. 236), reproduced opposite page 36; William 
Van der Velde ; Gerard Dou ; Van der Heyden, with " The 
Margin of a Canal" (No. 225), so clear and solemn ; Paul 
Potter, at his best in a small canvas ; Caspar Nietscher, 
with a "Lace Maker" (No. 237), one of the simplest and 
most attractive works of this artificer that I have seen, and 
notable for the absence of that satin which he seems to 
have lived to reproduce in paint ; and Gabriel Metsu, re- 
presented by several little masterpieces, all faithful to that 
womanly figure whom he painted so often, and who, I 
imagine, in return did so much for the painter's material 
well being : for she is always busy in such pleasant domestic 
oflSces as bringing enough wine, or preparing enough dinner, 
or playing an air upon the harpsichord; and is always 
smiling, and always the same (as the clever wife notoriously 
has to be), with her light hair smoothed back from her 
shining brow, and her fair nose with the dip where one looks 




32 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

for the bridge, and her red jacket and white cap. One 
seems to know few women in real hfe better than this kindly 
Dutch friend of Gabriel Metsu. Lastly I would name 
Jan Steen, who in this collection is not at his greatest, 
although, as always with him, he gives a sign of it some- 
where in every picture. In the "Merry Making in a 
Tavern" (No. 158), for example, the mother and child in 
the foreground are set down perfectly, as only his touch 
could have contrived; and in the " Harpsichord Lesson" 
(No. 154), the girl's hands on the keys are unmistakably 
the hands of a learner. 

In Room XII are the Guardis for which the Wallace 
Collection is famous — soft and benign scenes in Venice, 
gondolas that are really moving, oars from which you can 
hear the silver drops splashing into the water, beautiful 
fairy architecture : Venice, in fact, floating on her Adriatic 
like a swan. The best Guardis ever brought together are 
here, hung side by side with the more severe and archi- 
tectural Canaletto, to show how much more human and 
southern and romantic Venice may be made by pupil than 
by master. For the water colours you seek Rooms XXI 
and XXII, notable above all for their examples of Richard 
Parkes Bonington, that great and sensitive colourist, who, 
like Keats, had done his work and was dead before ordinary 
men have made up their minds as to what they will attempt. 
In two or three of these tiny drawings Bonington is at his 
best — particularly in No. 700, " Fishing Boats " ; No. 714, 
"The Church of Sant' Ambrogio, Milan," and, above all, 
No. 708, " Sunset in the Pays de Caux, " which might be 
placed beside Turner's greatest effects of light and lose 
nothing, although it is only seven and a half inches by ten. 

On the ground floor are a few more pictures, among 
them two or three which one would like to see in the great 




SUZANNE \ AX (OLLEN AND HER DAUGHTER 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY REMBRANDT IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION 



MINIATURES 33 

gallery, properly lighted, such as Bramantino's charming 
fresco of "The Youthful Gian Galeazzo Sforza reading 
Cicero," which should be reproduced for all boys' schools ; 
Pieter Pourbus' very interesting " Allegorical Love Feast " 
— this painter's work being rare in England ; and Bron- 
zino's portrait of Eleanora de Toledo. In the room where 
these pictures hang are the cases devoted to coloured wax 
reliefs, a very amusing collection. In the great hall at 
the back is the armour, and elsewhere are statuary, furni- 
ture and a priceless company of miniatures, many of them 
very naked, but all dainty and smiling. I am no judge 
of such confectionery, but I recall one or two that seem to 
stand out as peculiarly dexterous or charming : I remember 
in particular a portrait wrongfully described as " The Two 
Miss Gunnings," by Adolphe-Hall, and Samuel Cooper's 
" Charles II." I have said nothing of the Sevres porcelain 
and enamelled snuff boxes, the bronzes and ecclesiastical 
jewels. I may indeed almost be said to have said nothing 
of the collection at all ; for it defies description. Amazing 
however you consider it, when you realise that it was all 
the work of two connoisseurs it becomes incredible. Cer- 
tainly its acquisition is the best thing that has happened 
to London in my time. 



CHAPTER III 

MAYFAIR AND THE GEORGIANS 

The Stately Homes of London — Shepherd's Market and the Past — 
Gay's Trivia — Memorial Tablets — Mayfair — Keith's Chapel 

— Marriage on Easy Terms — Curzon Street — Shelley and the 
Lark — Literary Associations — Berkeley Square — The Beaux 

— Dover Street — John Murray's — Grosvenor Square — South 
Audley Street and Chesterfield House 

OF the vast tracts of wealthy residential streets in 
Bayswater and Belgravia and South Kensington 
there is nothing to say, because they are not interesting. 
They are too new to have a history (I find myself instinct- 
ively refusing to loiter in any streets built since Georgian 
days), and for the most part too regular to compel atten- 
tion as architecture. But Mayfair is different : Mayfair's 
bricks and stones are eloquent. 

Mayfair, whose oldest houses date from the early years 
of the eighteenth century, is strictly speaking only a very 
small district ; but we have come to consider its boundaries 
Piccadilly on the south, on the north Oxford Street, on the 
east Bond Street, and on the west Park Lane. Since 
most of the people who live there have one or more other 
houses, in England or Scotland, Mayfair out of the season 
is a very desolate land; but that is all to the good from 
the point of view of the wanderer. It is still one of the 
most difficult districts to learn and so many are its culs de 

34 



SHEPHERD'S MARKET 35 

sac — often a mews, for from almost every Mayfair house 
may be heard a horse stamping — and so capricious 
its streets, that one may lose one's way in Mayfair very 
easily. I can still do so, and still make a discovery every 
time ; whether, as on my last visit, the little very green oasis 
between South Street and Mount Street with the children 
in an upper room of a school singing a grave hymn, or, 
on the visit before, an old ramifying stable-yard in Shep- 
herd Street, absolutely untouched since the coaching days. 

In Shepherd's Market, just here, which is one of the 
least modernised parts of London, it is still possible to feel 
in the eighteenth century. It lies just to the south of 
Curzon Street, in the democratic way in which in Lon- 
don poor neighbourhoods jostle wealthy ones, and it is 
a narrow street or two filled with bustling little shops 
and busy shopkeepers. Many of the houses have hardly 
been touched since they were built two hundred years ago, 
nor have the manners of the place altered to any serious 
degree. Gentlemen's gentlemen, such as one meets 
about here, remain very much the same: the coachmen 
and butlers and footmen who to-day emerge from the 
ancient Sun inn, wiping their mouths, are not, save for 
costume, very different from those that emerged wiping 
their mouths from the same inn in the days of Walpole 
and Charles James Fox. Edward Shepherd, the architect 
who built Shepherd's Market, hved in Wharncliff House, 
the low white house in its own grounds with a little lodge, 
opposite the Duke of Marlborough's square white palace, 
and it still looks to be one of the pleasantest houses in 
London. 

A thought that is continually coming to mind as one 
walks about older London and meditates on its past is how 
modern that past is — how recently civilisation as we 



36 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

understand it came upon the town. Superficially much is 
changed, but materially nothing. Half an hour spent on 
the old Spectator or Taller, or with Walpole's Letters or 
Boswell's Johnson, shows you that. The London of Gay's 
Trivia, that pleasant guide to the art of walking in the 
streets of this city, is at heart our own London — with tri- 
fling modifications. The Bully has gone, the Nicker (the 
gentleman who broke windows with halfpence) has gone, 
the fop is no longer offensive with scent, wigs have become 
approximately a matter of secrecy, and the conditions of 
life are less simple; but Londoners are the same, and 
always will be, I suppose, and the precincts of St. James still 
have their milkmaids. It is too late in the day to quote 
from the poem (which some artist with a genial backward 
look, like Mr. Hugh Thomson, ought to illustrate), but my 
little edition has an index, and I might quote a little from 
that, partly because it is interesting in itself, and partly 
because it transforms the reader into his own poet. Here 
are some entries : — 

Alley, the pleasure of walking in one. 

Bookseller skilled in the weather 

Barber, by whom to be shunned 

Butchers, to be avoided 

Cane, the convenience of one 

Coat, how to chuse one for the winter 

Countryman perplexed to find the way 

Coachman, his whip dangerous 

Crowd parted by a coach 

Cellar, the misfortunes of falling into one 

Dustman, to whom offensive 

Fop, the ill consequence of passing too near one. 

Father, the happiness of a child who knows his own. 

Ladies dress neither by reason nor instinct. 




LADY READING A LETTER 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY TERBURG IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION 



TABLETS 37 

Milkman of the city unlike a rural one. 

Overton the print seller 

Oyster, the courage of him that first ate one 

Prentices not to be reUed on 

Perriwigs, how stolen off the head 

Playhouse, a caution when you lead a lady out of it 

Shoes, what most proper for walkers 

Stockings, how to prevent their being spattered. 

Schoolboys mischievous in frosty weather 

Umbrella, its use 

Wig, what to be worn in a mist 

Way, of whom to be inquired. 

Wall, when to keep it. 
From these heads one ought — given a knack of rhyme — 
to be able to make a Trivia for oneself ; and they show that 
the London life of Gay's day — Trivia was published in 
1712 — was very much what it is now. There were no 
Music Halls, no cricket matches, no railway stations ; but 
I doubt if they lacked much else that we have. 

From No. 1 London the best way to Shepherd's Market 
is by Hamilton Place and Hertford Street, or it may be 
gained from Piccadilly by the narrow White Horse Street. 
Hertford Street is a street of grave houses where many 
interesting men and women have lived, only one of whom, 
however — Dr. Jenner, the vaccinator, at No. 14 — has a 
tablet. The erection of tablets in historic London — a 
duty shared by the County Council and the Society of Arts 
— is very capriciously managed, owing to a great extent to 
the reluctance of owners or occupiers to have their walls 
thus distinguished for gapers. Mayfair, so rich in residents 
of eminence, has hardly any tablets. Upon Hertford 
Street's roll of fame is also Capabihty Brown, who invented 
the shrubbery, or at any rate made it his ambition to make 



38 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

shrubberies grow where none had grown before, and was 
employed on this task, and on the laying out of gar- 
dens, by gentlemen all over England. Sheridan lived at 
No. 10 during four of his more prosperous years, in the 
house where General Burgoyne (who was also a play- 
wright) died. Bulwer Lytton was at No. 36 in the 
eighteen-thirties . 

Mayfair proper, which takes its name from the fair 
which was held there every May until the middle of the 
eighteenth century, on ground covered now by a part of 
Curzon Street and Hertford Street, has changed its char- 
acter as completely as any London district. In those days 
it was notorious. Not only was the fair something of a 
scandal, but the Rev. Alexander Keith, in a little chapel 
of his own, with a church porch, close to Curzon Chapel, 
was in the habit of joining in matrimony more convenient 
than holy as many as six thousand couples a year, on the 
easiest terms then procurable south of Gretna Green. 
Among those that took advantage of the simplicities and 
incuriousness of Keith's Chapel was James, fourth Duke of 
Hamilton, in his curtain-ring marriage with the younger 
of the beautiful Miss Gunnings. Curtain-ring and Keith 
notwithstanding, this lady became the mother of two Dukes 
of Hamilton, and, in her second marriage, of two Dukes of 
Argyle. Keith meanwhile died in the Fleet prison. Not 
only is his chapel no more, but Curzon Chapel, its author- 
ised neighbour and scandalised rival, is no more ; for a year 
or so ago the Duke of Marlborough, wishing a new town 
house, used its site. 

Curzon Street, of which this mansion is one of the most 
striking buildings, might be called the most interesting 
street in Mayfair. Although it has new houses and newly- 
fronted houses, it retains much of its old character, and it 



SHELLEY THE LARK 39 

is still at each end a cul de sac for carriages, and that is 
always a preservative condition. Now and then one comes 
to a house which must be as it was from the first — No. 35, 
for example — which has the old windows with white frames 
almost flush with the fagade (now, I believe, forbidden 
by the urban authorities, but a certain aid to picturesque- 
ness, as Bedford Row eminently shows), and the old tiled 
roof. Like so many houses in this neighbourhood. No. 21 
retains its extinguishers for the torches of the link boys. 
To give a list of Curzon Street's famous inhabitants would 
not be easy; but it was at No. 19 that Lord Beaconsfield 
died, and at No. 8 died the Miss Berrys, of whom Walpole 
has so much that is delightful to say. 

Curzon Street's tributaries have also preserved much of 
their early character: Half Moon Street, Clarges Street, 
the north part of which has the quaintest little lodgings, 
Bolton Street, and so forth. In Half Moon Street, named, 
like many other London streets and omnibus destinations, 
after a public house, lived for a while such very different 
contemporaries as Hazlitt, Shelley and Madame d'Arblay. 
I like the picture of Shelley there a hundred years ago: 
"There was," says Hogg in his life of his friend, "a little 
projecting window in Half Moon Street in which Shelley 
might be seen from the street all day long, book in hand, 
with lively gestures and bright eyes; so that Mrs. N. said 
he wanted only a pan of clear water and a fresh turf to 
look like some young lady's lark hanging outside for air 
and song." Mrs. N. might walk through Half Moon Street 
to-day till her legs ached, and see no poet. Our poets are 
for the most part at the British Museum or the Board of 
Trade, and are not at all like larks. 

Clarges Street, which is next Half Moon Street on the 
east, has its roll of fame too. Dr. Johnson's blue-stock- 



40 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

inged friend Mrs. Elizabeth Carter died at a great age at 
No. 21, and Nelson's warm-hearted friend Lady Hamilton 
occupied No. 11, from 1804 to 1806. Edmund Kean 
lived at No. 12 for eight years, and Macaulay lodged at No. 
3 on his return from India. No. 32, in Mr. Kinnaird the 
banker's days, was one of Byron's haunts. Bolton Street, 
near by, which just two hundred years ago was the most 
westerly street in London, was the home of Pope's friend 
Martha Blount, who inspired some of his most exquisite 
compliments; and it was there that Madame d'Arblay 
moved in 1818 and was visited by Sir Walter Scott and 
Samuel Rogers. 

At its east end Curzon Street narrows to a passage be- 
tween the gardens of Devonshire House and Lansdowne 
House, which takes the foot passenger into Berkeley Street. 
Once, however, a horseman made the journey too : a high- 
wayman, who after a successful coup in Piccadilly, evaded 
his pursuers by dashing down the steps and along this 
passage — a feat which led to the vertical iron bars now 
to be seen at either end. 

Berkeley Square is smaller than Grosvenor Square but it 
has more character. Many of the wealthy inhabitants of 
Grosvenor Square are willing to take houses as they find 
them ; but in Berkeley Square they make them peculiarly 
their own. At No. 11 Horace Walpole lived for eighteen 
years (with alternations at Strawberry Hill), and here he 
died in 1797. At No. 45 Chve committed suicide. " Auld 
Robin Gray" was written at No. 21. 

To the task of tracing the past of this fashionable 
quarter there would of course be no end, and indeed one 
could not have a much more interesting occupation; but 
this is not that kind of book, and I have perhaps said 
enough to send readers independently to Wheatley and 







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THE "LAUGHING" CAVALIER 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY FRANS HALS IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION 



HAY HILL'S FOOTPADS 41 

Cunningham,^ who have been so useful to me and to whom 
old London is more familiar than new. For anyone bent 
on this pleasant enterprise of re-peopling Mayfair, Berke- 
ley Square is a very good starting point. Charles Street, 
Bruton Street, and Mount Street all lead from it, of which 
Charles Street perhaps retains most of its ancient peace and 
opulent gravity. One of its new houses, with three dormer 
windows, has some of the best wrought iron in London. 
At No. 42 lived, in 1792, Beau Brummell; while another 
Charles Street dandy — but only half a one, since he 
smirched his escutcheon by writing books and legislating 
— was the first Lord Lytton. Here also Mr. Burke flirted 
with Fanny Burney, before Mrs. Burke's face too. Later, 
Beau Brummell moved to 4 Chesterfield Street, where he 
had for neighbour George Selwyn, who made the best 
jokes of his day and dearly loved a hanging. In Bruton 
Street — at No. 24 — lived in 1809 another George who 
was also a wit, but of deeper quality, George Canning. 

Through Bruton Street we gained Bond Street, London's 
Rue de la Paix, which only a golden key can unlock ; but 
into Bond Street we will not now stray, but return to 
Berkeley Square and climb Hay Hill, — where the Prince 
of Wales, afterwards George IV, with a party, was once 
waylaid by footpads; but to little profit, for they could 
muster only half a crown between them — and so come to 
Dover Street, where once lived statesmen and now are 
modistes. Among its old inhabitants were John Evelyn, 
who died in the ninth house on the east side from Piccadilly, 
and Harley, Earl of Oxford, in whose house, the second 
from Piccadilly on the west side, Pope and Swift and Ar- 

* London Past and Present. Its Histories, Associations and 
Traditions, by H. B. Wheatley, based upon Peter Cunningham's 
Handbook of London. Three volumes. Murray. 



42 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

buthnot used to meet in what Arbuthnot called Martin's 
office — Martin being Scriblerus, master of the art of sink- 
ing. In another Dover Street house lived Sir Joshua 
Reynolds' sister, whose guests often included Johnson and 
his satellite. 

Albemarle Street, which also is no longer residential and 
has been given up to business, also has great traditions. 
Lord Bute lived here, and here Zoff any painted the portrait 
of John Wilkes ; Charles James Fox lived here for a little 
while, and Robert Adam and James Adam, who with their 
brothers built the Adelphi, both died here. Louis XVIII 
stayed at Grillion's Hotel when in exile in 1814. But the 
most famous house is John Murray's, at No. 50, where the 
Quarterly Review, so savage and tartarly, was founded, 
and whence so much that is best in literature emerged, 
whose walls are a portrait gallery of English men of letters. 
Byron's is of course the greatest name in this house, but 
Borrow's belongs to it also. Scott and Byron first met 
beneath this roof. 

It was at the Mount Coffee House in Mount Street, 
which takes one from Berkeley Square toGrosvenor Square, 
that Shelley's first wife Harriet Westbrook, about whom 
there has been too much chatter, lived, her father being 
the landlord ; but Mount Street bears few if any traces of 
that time, for the rebuilder has been very busy there. 
And so leaving on the left Farm Street, where Mayfair's 
Roman Catholics worship, we turn into Grosvenor Square. 
Grosvenor Square is two hundred years old and has had 
many famous residents. It was in an ante-room of the 
Earl of Chesterfield's house here that Johnson cooled his 
heels and warmed his temper. Mr. Thrale died in Gros- 
venor Square, and so did John Wilkes, at No. 30. At No. 
22 lived Sir WilUam and Lady Hamilton, with "Vathek" 



END OF MAYFAIR 43 

Beckford, and thither went Nelson after the battle of the 
Nile. When gas came in as the new illuminant, Grosvenor 
Square was sceptical and contemptuous, and it clung to oil 
and candles for some years longer than its neighbours. 

The two Grosvenor Streets, Upper and Lower, have rich 
associations too. Mrs. Oldfield died at No. 60 Upper 
Grosvenor Street in 1730; at No. 13 Scott and Coleridge 
had a memorable meeting in 1809. The two Brook Streets, 
and indeed all the Grosvenor Square tributaries, are also 
worth studying by the light of Wheatley and Cunningham ; 
while South Audley Street, although it is now principally 
shops, is rich in sites that have historic interest. At 77, 
for instance, lived Alderman Wood, the champion of Caro- 
line of Brunswick, who was his guest there on her return 
from Italy in 1820. Many notable persons were buried 
in Grosvenor Chapel, among them Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu and John Wilkes. 

The house within its own walls and gates at the south- 
east corner of South Audley Street is Chesterfield House, 
built in the middle of the eighteenth century for the 
famous fourth Earl of Chesterfield, who wrote the Letters, 
and who by his want of generosity (but that was in Gros- 
venor Square) stimulated Dr. Johnson to a better letter 
than any of his own. And at this point we enter Curzon 
Street again. 



CHAPTER rv 

ST. JAMES'S AND PICCADILLY EAST 

The other Park Lane — High Politics — Samuel Rogers — St. James's 
Place — Male streets — Hoby the Bootmaker — Carlyle's feet — 
St. James's Street — St. James's Palace — Blucher in London — 
Pall Mall and Nell Gwynn — The Clubs — St. James's Square — 
Dr. Johnson's Night Walk — Jermyn Street — St. James's Church 
— Piccadilly again — "To a Lost Girl with a Sweet Face" — The 
Albany — Burlington House — The Diploma Gallery — A Leo- 
nardo — Christy Minstrels and Maskelyne and Cook — Georgian 
London once more — Bond Street and Socrates — Shopping — 
Tobacconists — Chemists — The Demon Distributor — Bond 
Street's Past — Regent Street — The Flower Girls 

FROM Mayfair it is a pleasant walk for one still in- 
terested in the very core of aristocratic life to that 
other Park Lane, Queen's Walk, lined also with its palaces 
looking westward over grass and trees — these, however, 
being the grass and trees of Green Park. Some of London's 
most distinguished houses are here — among them Hamil- 
ton House and Stafford House, where are pictures beyond 
price. Arlington Street, where the upper Queen's Walk 
houses have their doors, has long been dedicated to high 
politics. Every brick in it has some political association: 
from Sir Robert Walpole to the late Lord Salisbury. 
Horace Walpole lived long at No. 5, and was born opposite. 
At No. 4 lived Charles James Fox ; and it was at lodgings 
in Arlington Street in 1801 that Lady Nelson parted 



ST. JAMES'S PLACE 45 

for ever from her husband, being " sick of hearing of ' Dear 
Lady Hamilton.'" 

St. James's Place also has political associations, but is 
more tinged with literature than Arlington Street. Addi- 
son lived here, and here lived Pope's fair Lepel. Fox, 
who seems to have lodged or lived everywhere, was here in 
1783. "Perdita" Robinson was at No. 13; Mrs. Delany 
died here ; and Byron was lodging at No. 8 when English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers burst on the town. But the 
king of St. James's Place was Samuel Rogers, who lived 
at No. 22 from 1803 until 1855, when he died aged ninety- 
five, and in that time entertained everyone who was al- 
ready distinguished and distinguished the others by enter- 
taining them. 

St. James's Place is the quietest part of aristocratic Lon- 
don. I have been there even in mid afternoon in the 
season and literally have seen no sign of life in any of its 
odd ramifications. Every house is staid ; every house, one 
feels, has had its history and perhaps is making history 
now ; wealth and birth and breeding and taste are as evi- 
dent here as they can be absent elsewhere. One doubts 
if any Cockney child, even the most audacious, venturing 
up the narrowest of narrow passages from the Green Park 
into this Debrettian backwater, ever dared to do more than 
peep at its blue-blooded gravity and precipitately withdraw. 
I would go to St. James's Place for a rest cure: it is the 
last sanctuary in London which the motor-bus will dese- 
crate. 

Arlington Street and St. James's Place have kept their 
residential character ; but St. James's Street and Pall Mall 
have lost theirs. They are now the principal male streets 
of London. Women are the exception there, and there are 
no London streets so given up to women as these to men. 



46 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

The buildings are clubs and a few men's shops, most famous 
of which in the past was Hoby's, the bootmaker. Hoby 
claimed to have won Vittoria, and indeed all Wellington's 
battles, by virtue of the boots he had made for him in St. 
James's Street and the prayers he had offered for him in 
Islington, where he was a Methodist preacher. I suppose 
there are still characters among London tradesmen; but 
one does not hear much about them. Interest in char- 
acter seems to have died out, the popular ambition to-day 
being for every man to be as much like every other man 
as he can. Hoby was splendid. When Ensign Horace 
Churchill of the Guards burst into his shop in a fury, 
vowing never to employ him again, the bootmaker quietly 
called to one of his assistants, " John, put up the shutters. 
It's all over with us. Ensign Churchill has withdrawn his 
custom." Hoby kept all the Iron Duke's orders for boots ; 
I wonder where they are now. I know personally of only 
one great man's letter to his bootmaker, and that is on the 
walls of a shop near Charing Cross, and in it Thomas 
Carlyle says that there at last, after many years, have his 
feet found comfort. 

Before St. James's Street was given up to clubs — White's 
with its famous bow window. Boodle's, Brooks's, the 
Thatched House, to mention the old rather than the new 
— it had its famous inhabitants, among them Edmund 
Waller, Gilray the caricaturist, who committed suicide by 
throwing himself from a window at No. 29, Campbell the 
poet, and James Maclean the gentleman highwayman. 

St. James's Street has the great scenic merit of terminat- 
ing in the gateway of St. James's Palace, a beautiful, 
grave, Tudor structure of brick. The palace, now the 
home of court officials, was the royal abode from the reign 
of William III, in whose day Whitehall was burnt, to 



^ 



h ■ 






f^-^^: 




\^ 



7^1 




;JM1 



ST. JAMES S STREET A.XIJ ST. JAMES's PALACE 



PALL MALL 47 

George IV. Queen Mary died there. Charles I was im- 
prisoned there before his execution and walked to White- 
hall on the fatal morning from this place — to bow his 
comely head down as upon a bed. General Monk lived in 
the palace for a while, and Verrio, the Italian mural painter, 
who covered fair white ceilings with sprawling goddesses 
and cupids, had his home here in the reign of James II. In 
1814 Bliicher lodged in Ambassadors' Yard, and, settled in 
his window with his pipe, bowed to the admiring crowds — 
an agreeable picture to think upon. Ambassadors' Yard 
is still one of the quietest spots in London, and indeed the 
Palace is a very pleasant place in which to retire from the 
streets, for those who prefer the repose of masonry to the 
repose of nature, such as St. James's Park offers. Levees 
are still held at St. James's ; but the old practice of hearing 
the Laureate declaim their state poems has been abandoned 
without any particular wrench. Every morning at eleven 
the lover of military music may enjoy the Guards' band. 

And so we come to the Park, of whose beauty I have 
already said something, and to the splendours of the new 
Mall, which is to be London's Champs Elysees, and to the 
monotonous opulence of Carlton House Terrace, the new 
home of ambassadors. 

Pall Mall is not only more sombre in mien but has more 
seriousness than St. James's Street. The War Office is 
here, and here are the Carlton and the Athenaeum. Marl- 
borough House is here too. But it was not always thus, 
for at the house which is now No. 79, but has been rebuilt 
and rebuilt, once lived Mistress Elinor Gwynn, over whose 
garden wall she leaned to exchange badinage with Charles 
II. The impostor Psalmanazar lodged in Pall Mall, and 
so did Gibbon, greatest of ironists. Gainsborough painted 
there, and Cosway, and there was the house of John Julius 



48 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Angerstein, whose collection of old masters formed the 
nucleus of our National Gallery. 

Captain John Morris's pleasant song about the charms 
of the sweet shady side of Pall Mall over all the allure- 
ments of the country has never found any echo in me. 
I find Pall Mall equally forbidding in wet weather or fine. 
There is something forbidding about these huge, sombre, 
material monasteries called clubs, solemn temples of the 
best masculine form, compounded of gentlemen and waiters, 
dignity and serviHty. They oppress me. Pall Mall has 
no sweet shade; its shade is gloomy. 

Turning up between the Army and Navy and the Junior 
Carlton clubs one comes to St. James's Square, once an- 
other abode of the rich and powerful, and now a square 
of clubs and annexes of the War Office, with a few private 
houses only. In 1695, when it was already built round, 
the square was a venue for duellists, and in 1773 a high- 
wayman on horseback could still carry on his profession 
there. At Norfolk House, No. 31, George III was born. 
The iron posts at No. 2 were cannon captured off Finisterre 
by Anson. At No. 15 hved Thurlow. At the north 
corner of King Street was Lord Castlereagh's, and here 
his body was brought after his suicide in 1822. It was 
round this square that Johnson and Savage, being out of 
money, walked and walked for hours one night, "in high 
spirits and brimful of patriotism," inveighing against the 
ministry and vowing to stand by their country. Later 
Johnson used often to quote the stanza about the Duchess 
of Leeds — 

She shall have all that's fine and fair, 
And the best of silk and satin shall wear, 
And live in a coach to take the air. 
And have a house in St. James's Square, — 



ST. JAMES'S CHURCH 49 

saying that it "comprised nearly all the advantages that 
wealth can give." 

Other streets in this neighbourhood have their pasts: 
Bury Street, where Swift had lodgings when he was in 
London, and Steele, after his marriage, and Moore and 
Crabbe ; Duke Street, where, at No. 67, Burke had rooms ; 
King Street, where Christie's is situated, the house where 
old masters and old silver change hands with such pathetic 
persistence ; and Jermyn Street, home of bachelors whose 
clubs are their father and their mother, where in its palmy 
residential days lived great men and women, even Marl- 
borough himself and Sir Isaac Newton. Gray lodged here 
regularly, over Roberts the hosier's or Frisby the oilman's ; 
and in 1832 in a house where the Hammam Turkish Bath 
now is Sir Walter Scott lay very near his end. 

To the end of all, in the case of many illustrious persons, 
we come at St. James's Church, between this street and 
Piccadilly, one of Wren's red brick buildings and a very 
beautiful one too, with a font and other work by Grinling 
Gibbons and a Jacobean organ. Here lie cheerful Master 
Cotton, who helped with the Compleat Angler, and Van 
der Velde the painter of sea-fights, and the ingenious but 
reprehensible Tom d'Urfey, and Dr. Arbuthnot, friend of 
Pope and Swift and Gay and wit. Mrs. Delany is also 
here, and Dodsley the bookseller, and the dissolute Old 
Q, and Gilray; and here was baptised the great Earl of 
Chatham. 

And so we come to Piccadilly again — the business part 
of it — with its crowded pavements, its tea rooms and picture 
galleries and restaurants. Piccadilly on a fine afternoon 
in May must be the busiest rich man's street in the world : 
but it is seldom quiet at any hour of the day or night, or 
at any time of the year. At night, indeed, it takes on a 



50 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

new character, of which there is unhappily only too much 
to say, but nothing here, unless perhaps I print some 
verses which framed themselves in my mind one summer 
night, or early morning, last year, as I walked from Fleet 
Street to Kensington, by way of the Strand and this famous 
road. 

TO A LOST GIRL WITH A SWEET FACE 

Piccadilly, 12.30 a.m. June 23, 1905 

Ere yet your girlish feet had won 

Mere standing on Life's hard highway, 

You deemed you had the right to run 
At riot speed, and none to stay. 

The counsels of the wise and old. 

To curb desire, vexed not your breast : 

For they, they were by nature cold. 

And you were you, and you knew best ! 

Your sole adviser was your blood. 

Poor child, why should you know mistrust? 
Instructed now by London mud. 

How unmistakable seems lust ! 

Too warm your heart, O vanquished, 

Your hands too eager for delight : 
A cool and calculating head 

Were better armour for this fight. 

Quick is the Town to profit in 

Its weaklings' generosity: 
And kindness, lacking discipline. 

Can be one's hardest enemy. 



THE ALBANY 51 

And so what should be joy is hell : 
Wounded, debased, forlorn you go: 

And all because you loved too well. 
And man, that should be friend, is foe. 

St. James's Church is Piccadilly's most beautiful old 
building ; the Institute of Water Colour Painters its most 
impressive new one ; Burlington House is its principal lion, 
and the Albany its quietest tributary. Many famous men 
made their home in this mundane cloister, where all is 
well-ordered, still and discreet — like a valet in list slippers. 
Monk Lewis had his cell at No. I A; Canning was at 
5 A; Byron at 2 A, in rooms that afterwards passed to 
Lytton ; Macaulay was at 1 E for fifteen years — in the 
eighteen-forties and fifties. Gladstone also was a brother 
of the Albany for a while. 

Of Burlington House, since it changes its exhibitions 
twice a year, there is little to say in a book of this char- 
acter. As a preliminary step for the full enjoyment of the 
Bond Street tea shops there is nothing like the summer 
Academy, where four thousand pictures wet from the easel 
touch each other; but the winter exhibitions of Old 
Masters are among the first intellectual pleasures that 
London offers, and are a recurring reminder of the fine 
taste and generosity of the English collector, and the 
country's wealth of great art. 

Few people find their way to the permanent Diploma 
Gallery at the top of Burlington House, where hang the 
pictures with which in a way every Royal Academician 
pays his footing, together with a few greater works. But 
I to climb the stairs is important, for the Diploma Gallery 
(Contains what might be called without extravagance the 
1 most beautiful drawing in London — a Holy Family by 



52 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Leonardo da Vinci, reproduced here opposite page 294. 
Being in monochrome this reproduction does it no injustice, 
and, though far smaller, preserves much of its benign 
sweetness, and the lovely maternity of it. A bas-relief of 
Michael Angelo and a figure of Temperance by Giorgione 
are other treasures of this gallery. Reynolds' sitter's 
chair and easel and three or four fine portraits are also 
here; Maclise's vast charcoal cartoon of the meeting of 
Wellington and Bliicher : sixty-six designs for Homer by 
Flaxman ; Watts' "Death of Cain" ; and a number of impres- 
sionistic oil sketches by Constable, some of them the most 
vivid presentments of English weather that exist. The 
rest is strictly diploma work and not too interesting. The 
sculpture room, full of diploma casts, yellow with paint 
or London grime, is, I think, the most depressing chamber 
I ever hurried from; but a few of the pictures stand out 
— Reynolds' portrait of Sir William Chambers, and Rae- 
burn's "Boy and Rabbit," and Sargent's "Venetian In- 
terior," for example. But it is Leonardo and Michael 
Angelo and Constable that make the ascent necessary. 

A few years ago it was to Piccadilly that every fortunate 
child was taken, to hear the Christy Minstrels; but this 
form of entertainment having been killed in England, 
within doors at any rate, that famous troupe is no more. 
The St. James's Hall has been razed to the ground, and as 
I write a new hotel is rising on its site ; yet twenty years 
ago the names of Moore and Burgess were as well known 
and as inextricably associated with London's fun as any 
have ever been. But the red ochre of the Music Hall 
comedian's nose now reigns where once burnt cork had 
sway: and Brother Bones asks no more conundrums of 
Mr. Johnson — " Can you tole me ? " — and Mr. Johnson 
no more sends the question ricochetting back for Brother 




VIRGIN AND CHILD 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY ANDREA DEL SARTO IN THE WALLACE COLLECTION 



SAVILE ROW 53 

Bones triumphantly to supply its answer. A thousand 
humorous possibilities have been discovered and de- 
veloped since then, from tramp cyclism to the farces of 
the cinematoscope, and faces are blacked now only on the 
sands. 

Gone too is the Egyptian Hall, that other Piccadilly 
Mecca of happy childhood, where incredible illusions held 
the audience a-gape twice daily. Maskelyne still remains, 
but there is no Cook any more, and the new Home of 
Mystery is elsewhere; while every Music Hall has its 
mysteries too. Change ! Change ! But the Burlington 
Arcade remains, through which, half stifled by heat and 
patchouli, one may if one likes regain the quietude of 
Georgian London : for one comes that way to Cork Street 
and Old Burlington Street and Boyle Street and Savile 
Row, which have been left pretty much as they were. In 
Old Burlington Street lived General Wolfe as a youth; 
and here lived and died the poet Akenside. Pope's friend 
Arbuthnot lived in Cork Street. Savile Row being the 
headquarters of tailoring is now almost exclusively a mas- 
culine street, save for the little messenger girls who run 
between the cutters and the sewing rooms; but once it 
was a street of family mansions, many of which are not 
much altered except in occupants since they were built in 
the seventeen-thirties. Poor Sheridan, who once lived at 
No. 14, died at No. 17 in great distress — just before assist- 
ance came to him from the Regent, who had been post- 
poning it for weeks and weeks, a failure of duty which led 
to Moore's most scathing poem. George Tierney, who 
fought a duel with Pitt, lived at No. 11, which previously 
was tenanted by Cowper's friend Joseph Hill, to whom he 
wrote rhyming epistles. Grote's house is marked by a 
tablet. 



54 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

One of Piccadilly's claims to notice I must not overlook 
— its shops. Though not so wholly given up to shops asS' 
Regent Street or Bond Street, where everything can be 
bought, Piccadilly contains certain shops of world-wide 
fame, whose windows I for one never tire of studying. One 
of these is that condiment house on the south side where, 
according to Sydney Smith, the gourmets of England will 
make their last stand when their country is under invasion. 
It is still as wonderful as in the days of the witty Canon : 
the ends of the earth still combine to fill it with exotic 
delicacies. Close by is I suppose the best-known taxider- 
mist and naturalist in the world, where you may see 
rhinoceroses' heads and hartebeests' horns, tiger skin rugs 
and coiled boa-constrictors, all ready for the English halls 
of great hunters. These shops are unique, and so also is 
that on the north side whose window is filled with var- 
nished chickens and enamelled tongues, all ready for Good- 
wood or Henley or Lord's, where it is the rule that food 
shall be decorative and expensive. 

Bond Street, which Socrates would find more than filled 
with articles that he could do without, is more complete 
as a shopping centre. You may buy there anything from 
a muff-warmer to a tiara, from caravan-borne tea to an 
Albert Cuyp ; for old and new picture dealers have made it 
their own, and I shall never forget that it was at Lawrie's 
in 1893 that I first saw Corot at his best — in four great 
pictures from a Scotch collection. Next to the picture 
dealers I like Bond Street's jewellers, although far behind 
the Rue de la Paix's both in taste and experimental daring. 
In the matter of jewels London is still faithful to its old 
specialising habit — the best jewellers being still in Bond 
Street and close by, and its diamond merchants still con- 
gregating almost exclusively in Hatton Garden; but a 



THE DECADENT TOBACCONIST 55 

decentralising tendency is steadily coming upon the town. 
Not so very long ago, for example, Wardour Street stood 
for old furniture, and Holywell Street for old books. But 
to-day Holywell Street does not exist, and old furniture 
shops have sprung up all over London, particularly perhaps 
in the Brompton Road and Church Street, Kensington. 
Longacre, once wholly in the hands of carriage-makers, is 
now a centre also for motor cars, which may, however, be 
bought elsewhere too. The pubhshers, once faithful to 
Paternoster Row, have (following John Murray) now spread 
to the west. Departmental London, so far as retail trade 
is concerned, is no more. 

The saddest change in the shops of London is in the 
chemists : the greatest, in the tobacconists. There must 
now be a tobacconist to every ten men of the population, 
or something near it, and many of these already save the 
purchaser such a huge percentage that a time must be 
coming when they will pay us to buy tobacco at all. The 
new tobacconists are in every way unworthy of the old : 
they know no repose, as a tobacconist should ; they serve 
you with incredible despatch and turn to the next customer. 
To loiter in one of their shops is beyond consideration and 
no Prince Florizel could be a tobacconist to-day, unless he 
was prepared for bankruptcy. Of course there are still a 
few old-fashioned firms on secure foundations where a cer- 
tain leisure may be observed ; but it is superficial leisure. 
I feel convinced that below stairs there is a seething activity. 
And even in these shops one cannot really waste time, 
although to enable one to do that with grace and a sense 
of virtue is of course the principal duty of the leaf. It 
will prove our decadence, our want of right feeling, of 
reverence, when I say that in all London I know to-day 
of only two tobacconists with enough piety to retain the 



56 A WANDERER IN LONDON 



^ 



wooden Highlander who once was as necessary and impor- 
tant to the dealer in Returns and Rappee as is the figure 
of Buddha to a joss house. And only one of these two 
tobacconists has sufficient virtue to set his Highlander on 
the pavement. This good man (all honour to him !) pur- 
veys the weed in Tottenham Court Road, on the west side, 
not far from the Euston Road. May he live long and 
prosper ! 

Sadder still is the decay of the chemist. There is a 
real old chemist's window in Oxford Street, opposite Great 
Portland Street, with a row of coloured jars such as poor 
Rosamund lost an excursion for ; but how rare these are ! 
Our new business habits, imported chiefly from America, 
have in no respect done so much injury — aesthetically — 
as in substituting the new store-druggist's crowded window 
for the old chromatic display. In the modern stress of 
competition there is no room to spare for pure decoration ; 
and so the purple jars have gone. And within all is 
changed too. An element of bustle has come into the 
chemist's life. Of old he was quiet and sympathetic and 
whispering : now his attitude is one best described by the 
words "Next please." I wonder that the sealing wax re- 
mains. Surely there is some American device to improve 
upon sealing wax ? A few of the good old shops may still 
be seen, if one is quick. There is one in Norton Folgate 
with a row of coloured jars ; and, best of all, there is that 
wonderful herbalist's in Aldgate, opposite Butchers' Row, 
which has been there since 1720 and where you may still 
buy Dr. Lettsom's pills and the famous Nine Oils. 

Another commercial sign of the times in London is the 
increase of news-agents (in addition to the kerb-stone 
salesmen), and with them the rise of the demon distributor. 
No recent London street type is more noticeable than he : 



BOND STREET'S PAST 57 

a large-boned centaur, half -hooligan, half-bicycle, who, 
bent double beneath his knapsack of news, dashes on his 
wheel between the legs of horses, under wagons and 
through policemen, in the feverish enterprise of spreading 
the tidings of winner and starting price. A few years ago 
London knew him not ; to-day we should not know London 
without him. 

But I am forgetting that we are in Bond Street, where 
these rough-riding Mercuries do not penetrate. The past 
of this thoroughfare has been almost wholly buried be- 
neath modern commerce, but it is interesting to recollect 
that it was at Long's Hotel in Old Bond Street in 1815 
that Scott saw Byron for the last time; and at No. 41, 
which was then a silk-bag shop, on March 18, 1768, that 
the creator of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim died. It 
was at No. 141 New Bond Street that in 1797 Lord Nelson 
lay for three months after the battle of Cape St. Vincent, 
where his arm was shot. 

From Bond Street one is quickly in Regent Street, once 
more among the shops and in the present day; but 
Regent Street is not interesting except as part of a great 
but futile scheme to plan out a stately and symmetrical 
London in honour of a blackguard prince. Of this, Port- 
land Place, Park Crescent and Regent's Park are the 
other portions. The project was noble, as the width of 
Portland Place testifies, but it was not in character with 
London, and it failed. No second attempt to provide 
London with a Parisian thoroughfare — with anything 
approaching French width and luxury — occurred until a 
year or two ago, when the Mall was taken in hand and 
the space in front of Buckingham Palace was made 
symmetrical. 

Regent Street in its turn leads to Oxford Street, where 



58 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

the great drapery shops — I should say, emporiums — are : 
paradises of mannequins and super-mannequins. More 
attractive to me is the httle, almost Venetian, knot of 
flower-sellers who have made the island in Oxford Circus 
their own, in summer adding to its southern air by large 
red umbrellas. Of such women one should buy one's 
flowers. 



CHAPTER V 

LEICESTER SQUARE AND THE HALLS 

Hogarth and Sir Joshua — The Music Hall — The Lion-Pluralists — 
The Strength of the Audience — The Comedians' Appeal — London 
Street Humour — Dan Leno — Cinquevalli the Superb — Perfec- 
tion — The Coliseum — Performances at Noon — The Circus and 
the Hippodrome — The old Simplicities — Performing Animals — 
Marceline 

LEICESTER Square, once Leicester Fields, took its 
name from Leicester House, which stood where 
Daly's Theatre and its companion buildings now stand, 
and was originally the home of Robert Sidney, Earl of 
Leicester, the father of Algernon Sidney and Waller's 
Sacharissa. The houses, or modern representatives of the 
houses, of its two most famous inhabitants, Hogarth and 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, may still be seen, each marked by a 
tablet : Hogarth's on the east side, and Sir Joshua's on the 
west. No artists live there now : rather is it a centre for 
artistes. 

Although neither the Alhambra nor the Empire is a 
music hall in the full sense of the term as we now use it, 
but rather a variety theatre, we may pause here, near 
Shakespeare's statue, to ponder a httle upon London's 
special form of entertainment — the Music Hall. For 
many as are her theatres — and during the past few years 
they have doubled in number — her Music Halls are more 
numerous still, and are more steadily filled, a large number 

59 



60 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

of them twice on a night. The theatre she shares with 
all nations; but the Music Hall proper is still curiously 
her own and was, I believe, her invention. 

Of London's many Halls only two or three have pro- 
grammes peculiar to themselves: the others are supplied 
by roving performers who appear sometimes at as many as 
four in one evening, rushing from one to another in their 
broughams or motor cars, and perhaps changing their 
costumes on the journey. The system is an absurd one, 
for it not only tends to eliminate personal character, but 
introduces into the evening's progress a mathematical pre- 
cision that is contrary to the Bohemian free-and-easiness 
that ought to prevail. Encores become impossible, because 
the unforeseen delay of five minutes thus produced in one 
Hall would upset the time tables of the two or three others 
whither the comedian is bound like an arrow immediately 
he has acknowledged the applause. 

London, however, bows to the plurahsing system. Her 
audiences, being infinitely stronger than managers, could 
stop it instantly if they wished ; but the ordinary London 
audience neither uses its strength nor is aware that it has 
any. Instead, it grumbles a little, and composes itself for 
the next "turn." 

The conservatism of the Hall is an interesting study. 
Although this class of entertainment has so grown in 
popularity that it may now be said to draw all classes, the 
articulate performers still address one class and one only — 
the class to whom the old vulgar jokes alone appeal ; the 
class for whom every low comedian in pantomimes all over 
the country toils every Christmas, and for whom the comic 
scenes in melodrama are invariably written. The theatres 
have room for illustration of every variety of life, and in 
their pits and galleries at even the most intellectual plays 




THE SHRIMP GIRL 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY HOGARTH IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



LONDON STREET HUMOUR 61 

many representatives of the typical Music Hall audience 
may be found; yet in the Halls themselves no effort is 
made to depart from such tried and trusted topics as 
drunkenness and infidelity, the disillusionments of marriage 
and the dark constitution of sausages, the embarrassment 
of twins and fleas and mothers-in-law, — the imaginary 
scene of trouble being always some such small mean 
street as Bermondsey or Kentish Town abounds in. 

It is rather odd, this persistence, this unfaltering appeal 
to one type of bosom. It means I suppose that a visit to 
the Music Hall is looked upon by all as sheer recreation, 
and any kind of thought in even so hmited a degree as 
would be set up by the faintest suspicion of novelty in the 
subject-matter of even a tuneful song would be resented. 
The eye and the ear alone are involved : the mind never. 

The contrast between the finish and efficiency of the 
jugglers and acrobats and trick cyclists who perform in 
these Halls and the slovenly coarseness and stupidity of 
many of the favourite singers and sketch-actors is very 
noticeable. Our standard of excellence among acrobats is 
very high : no mistakes are allowed ; but so long as a man, 
no matter how vile his accent, has a voice in which to 
bellow his triumphs of dissipation and vulgarity, or a face 
so made up as to indicate that what he says should be 
received with laughter, he may offend every refined sense 
and yet earn a salary equal to a Cabinet Minister's. 

The essential street and tap-room humour of London 
may be studied to perfection in a Music Hall. London 
humour is essentially cruel : it rejoices never, and is merry 
only when someone has met with a reverse, from Death 
itself to the theft of a glass of bitter. It is joyless. It 
never laughs at nothing, out of a clear sky. It misses no 
discomfiture, no calamity, no shyness. It is always suspi- 



62 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

cious and incredulous, always instant to reprove and accuse. 
Most of our street phrases indeed are invented to express 
either contempt or disbelief. If anyone would study the 
more alert and destructive street humour reproduced with 
something very like genius, George Robey is just now the 
man, and Marie Lloyd the woman. For a humaner variety, 
cynical to the last degree but gentle too, spoken with the 
Londoner's street accent at its most persuasive, Joe Elvin is 
the man, while for a certain happy irresponsibility of the 
city at its best you must go to Little Tich. I am of course 
treating of London's street humour only as a superficial 
artistic aid to life, an ameliorative element in this grey and 
grimy city. It is no more : it does not reflect inner char- 
acter. London's heart can be only too soft, anything but 
cruel. 

But George Robey and Marie Lloyd, Little Tich and Joe 
Elvin stand almost alone. The ordinary low comedian of 
the Halls too often has only the machinery of humour and 
none of its spirit. It is when one thinks of so many of 
them that the greatness and goodness of poor Dan Leno, 
for so long the best thing that the Halls could give us, 
becomes more than ever to be desired and regretted. In 
Dan Leno England lost a man of genius whose untimely 
and melancholy end was yet another reminder that great 
wits are sure to madness near allied. Not that he was 
precisely a great wit : rather a great droll ; but great within 
his limits he certainly was, and probably no one has ever 
caused more laughter or cleaner laughter. 

That was, perhaps, Dan Leno's greatest triumph, that 
the grimy sordid material of the Music Hall low comedian, 
which, with so many singers, remains grimy and sordid, and 
perhaps even becomes more grimy and more sordid, in his 
refining hands became radiant, joyous, a legitimate source 



DAN LENO 63 

of mirth. In its nakedness it was still drunkenness, 
quarrelsomeness, petty poverty ; still hunger, even crime ; 
but such was the native cleanness of this little, eager, sym- 
pathetic observer and reader of life, such was his gift of 
showing the comic, the unexpected side, that it emerged 
the most delicious, the gayest joke. He might be said to 
have been a crucible that transmuted mud to gold. 

It was the strangest contrast — the quaint, old-fashioned, 
half-pathetic figure, dressed in his outlandish garbs, waving 
his battered umbrella, smashing his impossible hat, reveal- 
ing the most squalid secrets of the slums ; and the resultant 
effect of light and happiness, laughter irresistible, and yet 
never for a moment cruel, never at anything, but always 
with it. The man was immaculate. 

In this childlike simplicity of emotion which he mani- 
fested we can probably see the secret of his complete failure 
in New York. In that sophisticated city his genial elemen- 
tal raptures seemed trivial. The Americans looked for 
cynicism, or at least a complete destructive philosophy — 
such as their own funny men have at their finger-tips — and 
he gave them humour not too far removed from tears. He 
gave them fun, that rarest of qualities, rarer far than wit 
or humour ; and, in their own idiom, they had " no use " 
for it. 

In the deserts of pantomime he was comparatively lost : 
his true place was the stage of a small Music Hall, where he 
could get on terms with his audience in a moment. Part 
of his amazing success was his gift of taking you into his 
confidence. The soul of sympathy himself, he made you 
sympathetic too. He addressed a Hall as though it were 
one intimate friend. He told you his farcical troubles as 
earnestly as an unquiet soul tells its spiritual ones. You 
had to share them. His perplexities became yours — he 



64 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

gathered you in with his intimate and impressive "Mark 
you " ; and you resigned yourself to be played upon as he 
would. The radiant security of his look told you that he 
trusted you, that you could not fail him. You shared his 
ecstasies too ; and they were ecstasies ! 

No matter what Dan did to his face, its air of wistful- 
ness always conquered the pigments. It was the face of a 
grown-up child rather than a man, with many traces upon 
it of early struggles. For he began in the poorest way, 
accompanying his parents as a stroller from town to town, 
and knowing every vicissitude. This face, with its expres- 
sion of profound earnestness, pointed his jokes irresistibly. 
I recollect one song in the patter of which (and latterly his 
songs were mostly patter) he mentioned a firework explo- 
sion at home that carried both his parents through the 
roof. *' I shall always remember it," he said gravely, while 
his face lit with triumph and satisfaction, " because it was 
the only time that father and mother ever went out together." 
That is quite a good specimen of his manner, with its hint 
of pathos underlying the gigantic and adorable absurdity. 

Irish (of course) by extraction, his real name was George 
Galvin : he took Leno from his stepfather, and Dan from 
an inspired misprint. His first triumphs were as a clog- 
dancer, and he danced superbly to the end, long after his 
mind was partially gone. But he will be remembered as 
the sweetest-souled comedian that ever swayed an audience 
with grotesque nonsense based on natural facts. 

But not even Dan Leno was to all tastes, except in the 
pit and gallery. It is one of the unavoidable blemishes 
upon the variety that governs a Music Hall entertainment, 
that there must be a certain section of the audience who 
have to endure much in order to see a little that they like. 
Yet there is always something that is worth seeing, always 




PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG SCULPTOR 

AFTER THE PAINTING BY ANDREA DEL SARTO IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



PAUL CINQUEVALLI 65 

in every Hall, however remote from the centre, one per- 
formance of strength or dexterity in which all the supple 
beauty of the human figure and its triumphs of patience 
and practice shine out. I would sit through an hour of 
rubbish (since one may talk and smoke, as one may 
not in any theatre) for five minutes of such a genius as 
Paul Cinquevalli; and him the Londoner may see any 
night when he is in town for sixpence or a shilling and 
have the honour of applauding the very Shakespeare of 
equilibrists. 

It is impossible to believe that greater skill and precision 
than Cinquevalli's will ever be attained. For my part I 
cannot think that we shall ever see accomplishment so 
great; but even if we do, I feel certain that it will lack 
the alliance of such charm and distinction. It is not 
merely that the incomparable Paul can instantly subjugate 
and endow with life every article of furniture that he 
touches : that in a moment billiard-balls run over his back 
like mice, billiard-cues assume the blind obedience of sheep ; 
it is not only this, but take away his juggling genius and 
there would still remain a man of compelling, arresting 
charm, a man visibly and fascinatingly pre-eminent. 
" Here is a power," one says, immediately his lithe figure 
enters. "Here is a power." As it happens, he goes on 
to prove it by neutralising the life-work of Sir Isaac Newton 
with exquisite grace and lightheartedness ; but were he to 
do nothing at all — were he merely to stand there — one 
would be conscious of a notable personality none the less. 

No one can enjoy watching a good conjurer more than 
I do — I mean a conjurer who produces things from noth- 
ing, not a practitioner with machinery — but a good jug- 
gler is even more interesting. The conjurer's hands alone 
are beautiful, whereas every line and movement of the jug- 



66 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

gler's body has grace. This at least is so with Cinquevalli. 
As I watched him last Blake's lines kept recurring to me : — 
" What immortal hand or eye 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry ? '* 
Not that Paul is a tiger, or that the words are wholly 
appropriate; but the law of association is the only one 
which I never break, and I like to put some of its freakish 
manifestations on record, especially as fundamentally it 
always has reason. 

I suppose there has never been such mastery over matter 
as Paul Cinquevalli's. Like the great man and humorous 
artist that he is, he has deliberately set himself the most 
difficult tasks, one would have said the insuperable tasks. 
What, for example, is less tractable than a billiard-ball 
— a hard, round, polished, elusive thing, full of indepen- 
dence and original sin, that scarcely affords foothold for 
a fly, and often refuses to obey even John Roberts on a 
level table "^ But Cinquevalli will not only balance a 
billiard-ball on a cue, but will balance another ball on 
that, and will even run two together, one resting on the 
other, backwards and forwards between two parallel cues. 
This feat I am convinced is as much of a miracle as many 
of the things in which none of us believe. It is perfectly 
ridiculous, after seeing it performed by Cinquevalli, to 
come away with petty little doubts as to the unseen world. 
Everything has become possible. 

With Paul one may use the word "perfection" quite 
comfortably, without fear of molestation. And I know I 
am right by an infallible test. Anything perfect moves 
me in the way that anything pathetic ought to do ; and to 
watch Cinquevalli performing some of his feats is to be 
wrought upon to a curious and, perhaps, quite comic de- 
gree. " You beauty ! You beauty ! " I have caught my- 




INTERIOR OF A DUTCH HOUSE 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY PETER DE HOOCH IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



HARRY LAUDER 67 

self saying again and again as he conquered one difficulty 
after another with his charming ease. In talking about 
Cinquevalli to an artist — and a very level-headed artist, 
too — after the performance, he said, before I had men- 
tioned this peculiarity of mine, "I must go and see him 
again. But the odd thing about Cinquevalli is that he 
always makes me cry." Then I confessed too; for after 
that I could have no shame in my emotion. Nor, indeed, 
had I before ; for, to quote Blake again — 

" A tear is an intellectual thing." 

The Music Hall favourite's period of triumph is so short 
that 1 hesitate to mention other names in a book of this 
character; but I should like to set on paper some tribute 
to the merits of a Scotch low comedian named Harry 
Lauder, whose peculiar gift it is to render glee as I cannot 
conceive of it ever having been rendered before — so in- 
fectiously, ecstatically. Lauder has this advantage over all 
other comic singers now performing — that he is an actor 
too and a very conscientious one. He lives the song. His 
humour also is very racy and rich. 

Whether London has reached high-water mark in 
frivolity, or whether new theatres and music halls are to 
be added to those already in full bloom, remains to be seen. 
The fashion for leaving home in the evening, both to eat 
and to be amused, to the extent now prevailing, is so new 
that one cannot judge. It has, indeed, almost all come 
about in the past ten years. 

Ten years ago had anyone said that London was about 
to possess a circus which should hold two thousand people 
and fill steadily twice a day, he would have been laughed 
at; yet so it is. The Cranbourn Street Hippodrome, 
hard by Leicester Square, does this ; while near it is the 
Coliseum, which holds three thousand people and gives 



68 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

three performances a day. It began indeed by giving four, 
the first being from noon until two o'clock, but the discovery 
was made that not even the frivolous Londoner has got 
quite so far as that yet. Perhaps had lunch been thrown 
in it might have succeeded. 

1 went to one of these curious midday revels. The after- 
noon light which can meet one blindingly as one leaves 
the ordinary matinee in summer, is reproach enough ; but 
it is nothing compared with the light of two o'clock which 
smote our eyeballs as we came away from that desolate 
auditorium. Desolate indeed, for nothing would take the 
London playgoer to the twelve o'clock performance. In 
vain Bible stories were presented in dumb show and galvanic 
action (to avoid our argus-eyed Censor) to the accompani- 
ment of an explanatory choir; in vain the humours and 
excitements of Derby Day were unfolded ; in vain the three 
stages revolved like Dervishes ; — no one would go. But 
by half-past two London is now ready to go anywhere. 

At first I was troubled about the Hippodrome. I re- 
sented its complacent disregard of equestrianism and its 
tendency to the Music Hall turn. I even went so far as 
to indite a lament. I mourned for instance over the smil- 
ing young women who thronged the Hippodrome door- 
ways masquerading as grooms. At the doorways should 
be negroes ; and " What makes you look so pale ?" a. clown 
should ask, ere the evening was over, of the blackest of 
them. And tan — what is a circus without tan ? That 
mingled scent of horse and tan that used to meet one at 
the pay-box is inseparably a part of the circus fascination. 
But there has never been any tan at the Hippodrome, 
nor is it suggested for a moment that it is any more the 
domain of horses than of lions. A horse now and then, 
it is true, eludes the vigilance of the manager and finds 



THE CIRCUS 69 

its way into the ring; but I have heard more than once 
members of the audience exchanging satisfaction upon the 
security from horsemanship that the Hippodrome affords, 
and I am certain they were expressing the feehng of the 
house. For any emphasis that is laid upon horses we 
might as well be in Venice. And yet, in spite of this 
slight upon the noblest of animals, the management have 
so little conscience and sense of right dealing that they 
go to the horse for their name, and call the place a Hippo- 
drome — the word circus, it seems, having gone out of 
fashion. Only in the provinces, those strongholds of 
good sense and wise conservatisms, and in Limbo, does 
the word circus now cause a thrill. In London we are 
too clever. 

"Horses bore one," say the London sightseers; which 
means of course that the circus is not for them at all. 
The circus is for a class of pure mind that is not bored, 
that takes with rapture everything that is offered. The 
circus is for the childlike, the undiscriminating, the ac- 
ceptive : for the same pure minds that enjoy apple dump- 
lings. It gives an idea of how lacking in purity of mind 
and simplicity the Londoner is, when I say that his is a 
city without a ring-master. There is a ring-master at the 
Hippodrome, it is true, but he wears a uniform and is 
a secondary, almost neghgible, personage, although his 
name is Otho Twigg. He is a ring-servant, not master. 
Think of a circus without a ring-master ! They used to 
have black hair, parted in the middle and beautifully 
smoothed, evening dress (even at matinees) and white 
gloves. The ring-master was almost one's earliest hero: 
the butcher perhaps came first, and then the policeman 
and railway guard; but the ring-master, when his hour 
struck, thrust these Warbecksand Simnels into impenetrable 



70 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

darkness. That whip was beyond all steels, all truncheons, 
all bull's-eye lanterns and whistles; one would not ex- 
change it for a sceptre. The ring-master's effulgence 
was superior even to the dimming influences of the clown's 
wit. That immortal dialogue following upon the bet of 
a bottle of "wine" (always "wine": what is "wine".'' 
champagne ? claret ? sherry ? port ? — port, I suspect) 
that the ring-master could not answer three questions with 
plain yes or no : how often have I heard it and how potent 
it always is ! The first question was anything ; the second 
question was anything ; but the third, propounded by the 
clown after long self -communing, was steeped in guile: 
" Do you still beat your wife ? " There is no way out of 
that; afiirmative and negative alike are powerless to rob 
that "still" of its sting; and off goes the clown with his 
bottle of wine, crack goes the whip, round ambles the old 
white horse with a back like Table Mountain, and the 
Signorina resumes her pretty capers. And to-day the 
ring-master is seen only for an instant, and the speaking 
clown not at all ! 

And there is another, a tenderer, loss. With the ring- 
master and the clown, the tan and the horses, have passed 
the ladies of the ring. It throws more light on the sophis- 
ticated cynical character of the Londoner when I say that 
he is perfectly willing to be without a dashing equestrienne. 
The bitter shame of it ! 

My indictment of the new Hippodrome practically con- 
sisted in the statement that it was not a circus. It was 
too good. A circus can offer poorer fare and yet by pure 
provincial minds be considered excellent, unsurpassable. 
Take, for example, the band. The Hippodrome has a 
band that would hardly be out of place in the Queen's 
Hall; but a circus needs no such refinement. It is con- 



STILL LAMENTING 71 

celvable that there is a Stradivarius in the Hippodrome 
orchestra; but a circus bandsman can be sufficiently an 
Orpheus on a half-guinea cornet. And there is that pain- 
ful matter of the inexpensive tan. In the country circuses 
it flies up now and then and dusts the front seats ; and 
now and then a horse's hoof beats against the side of the 
ring with a heavy thud. All this is gone. There are no 
brazen discords now, no heavy thuds, no flying, aromatic 
tan. And no stables ! It used to be a rapture to go 
through the stables in the interval — down the long, sloping 
passages, with gas jets in wire cages — and find oneself 
between the tails of countless piebald horses extending as 
far as the eye could reach. Here and there a glimpse 
might be caught of an acrobat or a clown, or, more ex- 
quisite sight, an equestrienne. The friendly, warm scent 
of those stables I can recall at this moment. Now it is no 
more. It used to puff out into the street and act as a 
more attractive invitation to the passer-by than any pris- 
matic poster. And with it came muffled strains of the 
band and the crack of a whip — all combining in the late- 
comer to work his anticipation to intensity. These ex- 
citements are over. Cranbourn Street knows them not. 
And those old, pleasant, innocent frauds are not prac- 
tised there: the imposing five-barred gates that, as the 
horse approached them, were sloped into insignificant 
hurdles ; the rings through which the Signorina purported 
to leap, but which in reality were insinuated over her by 
compliant attendants. And then there was that venerable 
jockey performance, the culmination of which was a leap 
from the ring to a standing position — albeit at an angle 
of thirty degrees — on the horse's back. In the old cir- 
cuses it was the custom of the horseman to miss the cul- 
minating jump two or three times, in order that a fiercer 



72 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

flame of interest might rage in the spectator. Then, when 
the feat succeeded, what a crash of brass and outburst of 
delight in the building, involving even the staff and ring- 
master. Those old simple days — how far from Cran- 
bourn Street they are ! 

The Hippodrome, however, steadily made its way, and 
one soon found that what it gave was as good as what it 
denied. Its standard in feats of physical skill has been 
very high : and that alone is much ; it has brought many 
beautiful wild animals before our wondering eyes, including 
the cormorants that catch fish for the Chinese; and it 
introduced Londoners to Marceline. That perhaps is its 
greatest achievement. For that I can forgive it its disre- 
gard of circus etiquette. 

I have been to the Hippodrome for half an hour again 
and again just to see Marceline making the children laugh. 
I suppose no one has made so many English children laugh 
as he has, except, perhaps, Dan Leno ; but Dan came into 
children's lives only during the three months of the Drury 
Lane pantomime, and was then lost to them, whereas 
Marceline, I believe, did not miss a performance at the 
Hippodrome, afternoon or evening, every day, for three 
years. To hear children laugh is good enough, but to see 
them jump about is better. That is the tragic difference 
between children and ourselves : we all can laugh, but only 
children can jump up in their seats. For us these spon- 
taneous, unconscious movements, these abandons, are no 
more. 

I spoke just now of Dan Leno. It was with poor Dan 
that Marceline shared his greatest gift, his radiance. 
When all is said in analysis of Dan Leno's fascination I 
believe that his radiance will remain as his chief possession. 
He had radiance as a painter has light — Corot, for exam- 







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PORTRAIT OF A TAILOR 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY MORONI IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



MARCELINE 73 

pie. Dan Leno used the same words and similes, the same 
gestures and material, that any other low comedian might ; 
but his radiance was his own. Marceline's radiance was 
his own too. It can never be acquired ! one has it, or has 
it not. 

The little man was quintessential drollery. Many funny 
men are funny only when they are provided with fun ; but 
Marceline was made up of it. His appeal was as a great 
droll: one of those rare visitants from another planet 
where Irresponsibility rules who now and then come to 
mock our seriousness (and perhaps emphasise it). One 
sees but few great drolls in a lifetime. Poor Dan was one, 
Marceline another. Some people might include Arthur 
Roberts, but not I. Roberts is without simplicity; and 
to be a great droll it is necessary to be simple. Perhaps 
William Blakeley was the best natural droll that the legiti- 
mate stage has known in our time : certainly not Arthur 
Roberts. 

Marceline might also be called the sublimation of the 
joyous simpleton. He carried on in his own refined, deli- 
cate way the traditions of the old zany at the fair — mis- 
understanding, suspecting, wondering, wool-gathering; 
but always joyous, always radiant, always a child. The 
element of wonder is essential to this kind of fun ; and that 
is where Arthur Roberts would be at once disqualified. For 
him, one feels, the world has no secrets ; whereas, for the 
genuine droll, it is new every morning. You felt that 
Marceline had no memory. Perhaps that is partly why 
he was so restful. 

His movements made for restfulness, too — the quiet 
efficiency of them, their sure swiftness. As an acrobat he 
had style and grace that became irresistible. At first one 
saw only a ridiculous little figure with a red nose, a ginger 



74 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

wig, a battered hat, and an astounding dress suit. But 
gradually one realised that here was a force, a master of 
means, a beautiful piece of human mechanism, combining 
with perfect, almost liquid, freedom, perfect restraint. 

And then there was of course his silence ; which in this 
world, and at this day, cannot but be fascinating and 
restful in the highest. Since Carlyle, no one has so elo- 
quently advocated the gospel of silence as Marceline. But 
whereas Carlyle shouted, Marceline practised what he 
preached. He made words ridiculous, Esperanto and 
Volapuk a superfluity. We came away from the Hippo- 
drome convinced that the universal lanD;uao:e of conversa- 
tion is the whistle, the universal language of menace the 
stamping of the feet. 

Variety is not the only spice of life. There is a spice in 
sameness too, and when I went to see Marceline it was 
sameness that I wanted. I was as offended if he omitted 
one familiar gesture or whistle, or substituted one strange 
one, as a child is when you tell her again the story of 
Cinderella and alter the words. I wanted Marceline never 
to do anything new. I wanted him always to call in the 
attendants and cover them with ridicule before he jumped 
over them ; I wanted him always to discover with rapture 
that Mr. Otho Twigg was bald, and to kiss his shining scalp ; 
I wanted him always to treat his hat brusquely and ador- 
ingly by turns ; I wanted him always to whistle and stamp 
his feet. It was one of my prayers that he would never 
speak. It was another that he would never change. 

He has not been in the Hippodrome for a year. Will 
he ever come back? 



CHAPTER VI 

TRAFALGAR SQUARE AND GREAT ENGLISHMEN 

London's finest site — Nelson — The French salutes — Trafalgar Day 

— The Steeple Jack — St. Martin's-in-the-Fields — The Gymnast 

— "Screevers" — Sentimental Patriotism — Partisan loyalty — A 
peril of predominance — London's statues — The National Por- 
trait Gallery — A recruiting ground 

OF Trafalgar Square London has every right to be 
proud. Here at any rate, one feels, is a genuinely 
national attempt at a grandiose effect. The National 
Gallery fagade is satisfactory in its British plainness and 
seriousness ; St. Martin's Church, with its whiteness emerg- 
ing from its grime, is pure London ; the houses on the east 
and west sides of the square are commendably rectangular 
and sturdy ; the lions (although occupied only in guarding 
policemen's waterproofs) are imposing and very British: 
while the Nelson column is as tall and as commanding as 
any people, however artistic or passionately patriotic, could 
have made it. It is right. I am not sure but it touches 
sublimity. Apart, I mean, altogether from the crowning 
figure and all that he stands for in personal valour, melan- 
choly and charm, and all that he symbolises : conquest it- 
self — more than conquest, deliverance. Indeed with the 
idea of Nelson added, there is no question at all of sub- 
limity; it is absolute. I like the story of the French sailors 
who visited London in 1905 rising to salute it as they were 

76 



76 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

driving past on their way to the West End. Would they 
have saluted Wellington's statue at Hyde Park Corner, I 
wonder ? May be ; but certainly not with the involuntary 
spontaneity that marked the Trafalgar Square demonstra- 
tion. (Fortunately, exhaustive as was our hospitality, 
they were not taken to the grave of Sir Hudson Lowe at 
St. Mark's in North Audley Street.) 

Every now and then the Nelson column is festooned in 
honour of Trafalgar Day, and for a while its impressiveness 
is lost. Wreaths at the foot were better. Patriotism and 
hero-worship, however, do not resent broken lines ; and 
the ropes of evergreens that twine about the pillar draw 
thousands of people to Trafalgar Square every day. I 
remember the first time I saw the preparations in progress. 
Turning into the square from Spring Gardens, I was aware 
of a crowd of upturned faces watching a little black spot 
travelling up the pillar. It reached the top, disappeared 
and appeared again, waving something. It was a Steeple 
Jack, an intrepid gentleman from the north of England, 
if I recollect aright, who had the contract for the decora- 
tions, and with whom, on his descent, it was the privilege 
of several newspaper men to have interviews. 

I was tempted after reading one of these to seek him 
myself, and either induce him to take me to the top with 
him, or hand him a commission to describe the extent of 
Nelson's view from that altitude, which, under the title 
"What Nelson Sees," would, I thought, make a seasonable 
and novel Trafalgar Day article. But I dared neither to 
converse with the living hero nor chmb to the dead one, 
and that article is still unwritten. On a clear day Nelson 
must have a fine prospect to the south — not quite to his 
ancient element, of course, but away to the Surrey hills, 
and east and west along the winding river. 





f 






TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



SCREEVERS 77 

St. Martin's Church — the real name of which is St. 
Martin's-in-the-Fields (how far from fields to-day !) stands 
upon its hill as proudly almost as St. Paul's, and has not a 
little of St. Paul's grave dignity. From its steps many 
Londoners get their impression of State pageants : I was 
standing there when the Shah drove by some years ago on 
a visit to the City fathers. Among those who lie beneath 
this church is Nell Gwynn, and Francis Bacon was chris- 
tened there. 

St. Martin's spire was once used for a strictly secular pur- 
pose, when, in 1727, Violanti, an Italian acrobat, fastened 
one end of a rope three hundred yards long to its summit, 
and the other to a support in the Royal Mews beyond St. 
Martin's Lane, and descended upon it head foremost with 
his arms and legs outstretched, among the crowd being 
"the young princesses with several of the nobility." 
The pavement to the north and south used to be the 
canvas of two very superior " screevers " — as the men are 
called who make pastel drawings on paving stones. Lon- 
don has fewer " screevers " than it used, and latterly I have 
noticed among such of these artists as remain a growing 
tendency to bring oil paintings (which may or may not be 
their own work) and lean them against the wall, supplying 
themselves only the minimum of scroll work beneath. To 
such go no pennies of mine — unless of course the day is 
dripping wet. On a dry pavement the " screever " must 
show us his pictures in the making: they must, like hot 
rolls, be new every morning. We will have no scamping 
in this art. 

Trafalgar Square, with Nelson and the surrounding 
figures of stone, notable among them the beautifully easy 
presentment of Gordon, brings us to the general considera- 
tion of London statues, of which there are many here and 



78 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

there, although, since we are not naturally a statue-erecting 
or statue-valuing people, as the French are, for the most 
part they escape notice. Among the French, indeed, wher- 
ever you go, a livelier love of country and a more personal 
pride in it are to be found. 

The old gibe against that nation that it has no word for 
home, and no true sense of home, might be met by the 
reminder that France itself is the home of the French in 
a way that England can never be called the home of the 
English. An Englishman's home is the world ; a French- 
man's France ; and he is never wearied in beautifying that 
home, and praising it, and keeping it homely. Such pride 
has he in it that there is hardly a place in the whole coun- 
try without its group of statuary in honour of some brave 
or wise enfant of the State, which is decorated at regular 
intervals and whose presence is never forgotten. It is 
impossible to do anything for France and escape recogni- 
tion and tribute. With the English, patriotism is taken 
for granted; but the French nourish it, tend it like a 
favourite flower, enjoy every fresh blossom. 

It is true that on certain anniversaries we also decorate 
some of our statues — Beaconsfield's, Gordon's, Nelson's; 
but we do so, I fear, less as a people than as a party. 
Charles the First's statue facing Whitehall has its wreaths 
once a year, but they come from a small body of " Legiti- 
mists"; the new Gladstone statue in the Strand will no 
doubt be decorated too for a few years, but it will not be 
a national duty, and none of those who take primroses to 
Parliament Square on April 19 will be represented. 

It is the manner of an Englishman not to remember — 
except as a partisan. Even the unveiling of the Gladstone 
statue in 1905, even the unveiling of a memorial to an 
Englishman of so commanding a personality and intel- 



THOUGHTS ON PATRIOTISM 79 

lectual power (apart from politics) as he, was unattended 
by any member of the Conservative Government, although 
he had been dead long enough, one would have said, to 
permit them to be present without confusion or loss of 
dignity. The incident is significant. We are all for or 
against. 

To look neither back nor forward, to care nothing for 
the past and even less for the future, and to accept all 
benefits as one's due and hardly as a matter for thanks, 
is a hard habit of mind that must, I suppose, come to a 
dominant pre-eminent race that has for so long known no 
hardship or reverse or any dangerous rival. Patriotically 
we are like the man in the American story who had a 
prayer written out on the wall and made his devotions 
every morning by jerking his thumb at it and remarking 
"Them's my sentiments." Our patriotism for the most 
part consists in being British as much as possible, rather 
than in individually assisting Britain or glorying in 
Britain. 

The danger of being at the top is that one gets into the 
habit of thinking of it as the only position; and that 
thought brings atrophy. A nation that wants to be at 
the top must necessarily work harder and think more and 
view itself more humbly than one that has long occupied 
that dizzy altitude. Also it must be careful to add some 
reward to virtue beyond virtue. In the rarified atmos- 
phere of success one forgets the little things: certainly 
one forgets the necessity of celebrating the stages of one's 
painful climb. Hence, I think, much of our British care- 
lessness about statues of great men. Given a loss of naval 
or military prestige, and relegation to a lower rank among 
the powers, and perhaps we should very quickly begin to 
be interested in our country again : a new national poetry 



80 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

would emerge, new heroes would be discovered, and nothing 
fine would be taken for granted. I wonder. I hope so. 
I have I think named all of London's statues that ever 
receive any attention. The others are chiefly statesmen, 
soldiers and kings, and may be said hardly to exist. I 
recall as I write Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's and 
again at her beautiful gate by St. James's Park ; George I 
on the top of the spire in Bloomsbury; George II in 
Golden Square; George III in a little scratch wig on a 
prancing horse at the east end of Pall Mall; George IV, 
riding without stirrups, and visibly uncomfortable, in Tra- 
falgar Square ; James I (looking too much like Mr. Forbes 
Robertson the actor) behind the New War Office ; Queen 
Elizabeth on the wall of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West ; Mary 
Queen of Scots for some reason or other on a new fagade 
in Fleet Street; Queen Victoria, by Blackfriars Bridge, 
standing, and in Kensington Gardens, seated; Cromwell 
in the shelter of Westminster Hall, very nigh the replaced 
bauble ; Richard Cceur de Lion, splendidly warlike, on his 
horse, by the House of Lords; the Duke of York of dis- 
creditable memory on his column in Waterloo Place, doing 
all he can by his sheer existence to depreciate the value of 
the national tribute to Nelson close by; Wellington at 
Hyde Park Corner and again before the Stock Exchange; 
Havelock in Trafalgar Square; Captain Coram by his 
Foundling Hospital ; Shakespeare in the middle of Leices- 
ter Square, within hail of the Empire and the Alhambra, 
and again, with Chaucer and Milton, in Hamilton Place; 
Milton outside St. Giles's, Cripplegate; Robert Burns in 
the Embankment Gardens ; Lord Strathnairn at Knights- 
bridge; Boadicea in her chariot on Westminster Bridge; 
Darwin, Huxley, Owen and Banks in the Natural History 
Museum; William Pitt, a gigantic figure, in Hanover 



A LIST OF STATUES 81 

Square ; Charles James Fox in Russell Square and at Hol- 
land House ; Carlyle in Chelsea ; Sir Hugh Myddelton in 
Islington Green ; Canning (who has a sparrow's nest under 
his arm every spring) in Parliament Square ; Cobden in 
Camden Town ; Sir Robert Peel (in profile very like Lamb) 
in Cheapside; Lord Herbert of Lea opposite the War 
Office ; Cardinal Newman by the Brompton Oratory ; 
John Wesley opposite Bunhill Fields ; George Stephenson 
at Euston; Sir John Franklin in Waterloo Place, near 
several Crimean heroes ; Byron, seated, in Hamilton Gar- 
dens, and in relief in St. James's Street and again in Holies 
Street; and Prince Albert, unnamed and unrecognised 
in Holborn Circus, and again, all gold, in Kensington 
Gardens, seated beneath a canopy not without ornamenta- 
tion. This, though far from complete, may be called a 
good list ; and I doubt if there are many Londoners who 
could have supplied from memory half of it. 

Indoor collections of statues and busts are to be seen 
in the Abbey, in St. Paul's, in the National Portrait 
Gallery and the Tate Gallery, in the Houses of Parlia- 
ment and the British Museum; while the facade of the 
Institute of the Society of Painters in Water Colours in 
Piccadilly has a fine row of the masters in that medium — 
De Wint and David Cox, Girtin and Turner, for example ; 
and the new Birkbeck Bank, off Chancery Lane, has a 
rich assortment of reliefs of illustrious intellects, including 
Hazlitt and Bessemer, Leonardo da Vinci and Charles 
Lamb. On the roof of Burlington House, again, are 
many artists. 

To the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square we shall 
return later; but after my digression on statues and the 
English pride or want of pride in their great men, this 
is the time to enter the National Portrait Gallery, hard 



82 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

by, where pictures of most of the nation's principal sons 
since the days when painters first got to work among us 
(less than a poor four hundred years ago, so modern is 
our culture,) may be studied. In masterpieces the gallery 
is not rich — nor need it be, for the interest is rather in 
the sitter than in the artist — yet it has many very fine 
portraits (quite a number of Reynolds', for example), a 
few superlatively fine, and not many wholly bad. Taken 
as a whole it is a very worthy collection, and one of which 
England has every reason to be proud. A composite 
photograph of each group of men here would make an 
interesting study, and it might have significance to a 
Lavater — unless, of course, the painters have lied. 

Some of the best and most interesting portraits are in 
Room XXV, which is the first room to take seriously as 
one climbs the building, where sailors, soldiers and authors 
grace the walls. Here is Fiiger's unfinished head of 
Nelson, doomed and sad and lovable ; Danloux's Viscount 
Duncan on the bridge of his vessel ; Sir Joshua's Admiral 
Keppel ; a flaming Lord Heathfield by Copley ; Wolfe as 
a youth, and again, with his odd lean face, as a general ; 
Landseer's sketch of Walter Scott without a dog, and 
Allan's Walter Scott in his study With his dog asleep; 
Laurence's large full face of Thackeray, above the in- 
gratiating bust of the great novelist as a schoolboy; Rom- 
ney's Cowper; and Sargent's Coventry Patmore, that 
astonishingly vital and distinguished work. Here also, 
still in Room XXV, are a number of George Frederick 
Watts's great contemporaries painted by himself and pre- 
sented by him to the nation ; but these I have never been 
able to admire or believe in quite as I should like to. 

Among the famous portraits in the first floor rooms — 
Nos. XIV-XXI — are Barry's unfinished sketch of Dr. 



NATIONAL PORTRAITS 83 

Johnson, so grim and mad; Reynolds' Goldsmith and 
Burke; Hickel's vast and rural Charles James Fox; Ar- 
thur Pond's Peg WofRngton in bed ; Phillips' rapt Blake ; 
Stuart's Woollett the engraver : Romney's family of Adam 
Walker, and Lady Hamilton (one of how many ?) ; Ros- 
setti's chalk drawing of his mother and sister; and some 
magnificent self-painted portraits of great artists not in- 
ferior to many in the UfEzi — notably Romney, very sad ; 
Sir Joshua, in the grand manner ; Joseph Wright ; and that 
very interesting craftsman, John Hamilton Mortimer, in a 
picture that might hang as a pendant to one recently pre- 
sented to the Diploma Gallery at Burlington House. Else- 
where is a fine Van Dyck by himself. 

Ascending to the top floor we recede to Augustan, 
Stuart and Tuoor periods. Here are Hogarth's Lord 
Lovat ; Kneller's Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough ; 
Van Ceulen's William III as a boy, very sweet and pensive, 
and the same artist's Earl of Portland ; Gheeraedts' Queen 
Elizabeth and the famous Countess who was Sidney's 
sister, Pembroke's mother; Zucchero's James VI of Scot- 
land and I of England, as a child with a hawk ; Van Dyck's 
children of Charles I ; Mierevelt's Queen of Bohemia (" Ye 
meaner beauties of the night ") ; Sadler's Bunyan in middle 
age, with dangerous little red eyes; Lefebvre's Isaac 
Barrow, that lean divine ; Lely's Flaxman ; and a putative 
but very interesting Mary Queen of Scots. I mention 
these because they seem to stand out ; because technically 
they catch the eye; but the most interesting men often 
are the worst painted, as for example the author of " Ham- 
let " and " Love's Labour 's Lost," who in his portrait here, 
the " Chandos " as it is called, looks incapable of writing 
either work, or indeed of doing anything more subtle 
than acquiring wealth as a sober unambitious merchant. 



84 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

sitting on the bench among the unpaid, or propping the 
Establishment in the capacity of church-warden. 

On the ground floor are some very interesting electro- 
types of recumbent figures of Kings and Queens from the 
tombs in the Abbey. Here also is Bacon seated in his 
chair, from the great chancellor's tomb at St. Albans, and 
a little Darnley kneeling to his ill-fated queen. The two 
death masks of Cromwell, more unlike than they ought to 
be, should be noticed, and one of Thomas Carlyle, very 
different from Boehm's bust which stands near it. 

The pavement between the corner of Trafalgar Square 
and the National Portrait Gallery has long been appropri- 
ated by the War OflSce as London's chief recruiting ground ; 
and here you may see the recruiting sergeants peacocking 
up and down, flicking their legs with their little canes, 
throwing out their fine chests, and personifying with all 
their might the allurements of the lordliest life on earth. 
One has to watch but a very short time to see a shy youth, 
tired of being an errand boy or grocer's assistant, grab at 
the bait; when off they go to the barracks behind the 
National Gallery to complete the business. Is it, one 
wonders, another Silas Tomkyns Comberbatch ? Not 
often. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND THE ITALIAN MASTERS 

I ONCE startled and embarrassed a dinner table of 
artists and art critics by asking which was the best 
picture in the National Gallery. On my modifying this 
terrible question to the more human form, " Which picture 
would you choose if you might have but one ? " and limit- 
ing the choice to the Italian masters, the most distinguished 
mind present named at once Tintoretto's " Origin of the 
Milky Way." One could understand the selection, so 
splendid in vigour and colouring and large audacity is this 
wonderful work; but it would never be my choice to live 
with. Another, an artist, also without hesitation, chose 
Titian's " Bacchus and Ariadne " ; and I can understand 
that too, but that also would not be my choice. After 
very long consideration I have come to the conclusion that 
mine would be Francesca's "Nativity." Take it for all 
in all I am disposed to think that Francesca's " Nativity " 
appeals to me as a work of companionable beauty and 
charm before any Italian picture in the National Col- 
lection. 

Piero della Francesca was born about 1415, and died in 
1492, and we may assume him to have painted this picture 
in the height of his powers — say about 1450. It is thus 
three and a half centuries old. In other words it was in 
existence, exercising its sweet spell on those that saw it, 
while Henry VI was on our throne, a hundred years before 

86 



86 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Shakespeare was born. The picture is unfinished and in 
not the best preservation, but its simphcity and sincerity 
and beauty are unharmed. The reproduction (on the 
opposite page) is necessarily small and, as in the case of 
all process blocks of great works, only a reminder of the 
original; but it conveys the exquisite grace of Mary's 
attitude. The little birds which Francesca's sweet thought- 
fulness painted in must be looked for in the picture itself. 

But all this talk of one's favourite picture is futile: 
because there are so many others that one would not really 
do without. Perhaps no picture is steadily one's favourite 
— at any rate in the National Gallery, where there is no 
"Monna Lisa." Better to confess to a favourite in each 
room, or a favourite for every mood. There are days, for 
example, when I cannot drag myself from Bronzino's 
"Allegory"; days when Cosimo's "Warrior" draws me 
to it continually ; days when warm colour reigns and Titian's 
"Madonna and Child," and Perugino's altar piece, and 
Bellini's "Agony in the Garden" seem the best; days 
when masterly quietude seems best, when Andrea del 
Sarto's "Sculptor" and Veronese's "St. Helena" and 
Velasquez's "Admiral" exercise the strongest sway; days 
when drawing seems more than all, when Michael An- 
gelo's "Entombment" becomes the most wonderful 
achievement of the human hand. 

One feels in the National Gallery, as in all large collec- 
tions of pictures, that one would like it to be smaller — to 
contain only the best. Not more of its greatest men — 
that would perhaps be asking too much — but less of its 
lesser men. Or a system of segregation would meet the 
case, by which the greatest were kept together and were 
no longer, as now, neighboured by the lesser men. Lorenzo 
di Credi for example would disappear from Room I, where 



BRONZING 87 

Michael Angelo and Botticelli and Cosimo and Bronzino 
and Filippino Lippi and Andrea del Sarto hang ; Beltraffio 
and several of his companions would recede from Room IX, 
with its Leonardo and its Correggios. Lorenzo di Credi 
and Beltraffio were both masters; but they are far from 
the highest rank. 

The official catalogue is by no means an easy one to 
follow. It is in two volumes, one for Foreign Schools and 
one for British, and each is alphabetical. For the pur- 
poses of quiet study at home it is excellent, a model of its 
kind ; but in the gallery it is a vexation, especially as it 
often happens that the painter is catalogued under his 
less-known name. I propose to consider the pictures as 
one comes to them in a walk through the Gallery from 
room to room in numerical order. 

Entering Room I — dedicated to the Tuscan School — 
the first picture on which the eye will probably rest is in 
some ways the most remarkable picture in the gallery, 
Bronzino's Allegory, " Venus, Cupid, Time and Folly " 
(No. 651). You will seek in vain in the other rooms for 
anything so vivid, so exultantly masterly, so brilliant in 
drawing, as this. Its preservation is marvellous : it must 
be just as alive as it was when three and a half centuries 
ago Bronzino painted it. Beautiful in the highest sense 
it is not: the bodies are too restless and exaggerated in 
pose ; its greatness lies in the drawing, the sense of power, 
and the joyous vitality of it all. For another side of this 
painter's genius — his quiet sympathetic painting of men 
and women — look at No. 649, " Portrait of a Boy," so 
grave and gentle and fine. The painter of "The Death 
of Procris," No. 698, on the left of the Allegory, the picture 
which probably next takes the eye and holds it — Piero 
di Cosimo, may also, like Bronzino, be studied in two 



88 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

moods in this room, for not only has he this beautiful work 
— Theocritus in colour — all so simple and true and sad, 
but on the opposite wall, in the corner, is his " Portrait of 
a Warrior in Armour," which I have already referred to 
as one of the most satisfying pictures here. We find great 
drawing again, and again a pagan inspiration, in the pen- 
dant to Piero's picture on the other side of Bronzino's 
Allegory, the "Mars and Venus," No. 915, of Botticelh: 
but it is a tenderer hand than Bronzino's that traced this 
Venus; not less sure, but substituting for the splendour 
of his vigour an almost northern melancholy. Of all the 
Old Masters, as we indiscriminately call the Italians, none 
is so modern as this Sandro Botticelli, whom the catalogue 
knows as Filipepi. Him also we can study in this room 
in another mood, for, also on the opposite wall, hangs one 
of the tenderest, most wistful, of his Madonnas — No. 
782 — perhaps the saddest mother and child ever painted. 
And with this picture we come to sacred subjects, which are 
supposed by the rapid generaliser to be all that these old 
masters ever thought of. It is rather interesting, I think, 
that the first three pictures from their hands to catch the 
eye in this great and representative collection should have 
had a mythological theme. 

Botticelli also has in this room, immediately on the right 
as one enters, a fascinatingly real "Portrait of a Young 
Man," which, once seen, is never forgotten. Close by it is 
a beautiful angel, in tempera, by this painter's most impres- 
sionable pupil, Filippino Lippi (son of Botticelli's master, 
Fra Lippo Lippi) . We come now, next the three mythologi- 
cal pictures I have mentioned, to one of the most famous 
and exquisite of all our national treausres — Andrea del 
Sarto's "Portrait of a Young Sculptor" (long thought to 
be himself), which is almost the last word in quietude and 



FILIPPINO'S VIRGINS 89 

distinction. On the other side of the doorway leading 
into Room III we find the faultless painter (as he was 
called) in a mood for richer colour, for here is one of his 
soft and lovely "Holy Families." Above the "Young 
Sculptor " is a Fra Lippo Lippi — No. 589, " The Virgin 
Mary Seated, an Angel presenting the Infant Christ to 
her," a very sweet and simple picture, hanging beside the 
only work of another great monkish painter that we pos- 
sess — Fra Bartolommeo's "Virgin and Child." 

After Bronzino's portraits comes the first of Filippino 
Lippi's adorable Virgins : a slip of a girl he always made 
her, with a high innocent forehead, and her hair combed 
back from it, and just a hint of perplexity mixed with the 
maternal composure which she has managed to assume, 
accepting her great fate very naturally. Sweetest of all is 
perhaps the Madonna in his "Virgin and Child with St. 
Jerome and St. Dominic " — No. 293 in this room — al- 
though more human is, I think, No. 1412 in Room III. 
Of the two Lorenzo di Credis, close by, I am doubtful: 
they seem to me, however charming in theirgladness, too 
shallow to be right ; but one has no doubts as to the great- 
ness of Allori's " Portrait of a Lady," No. 21 ; nor of the 
magic freshness — all the youth of the Renaissance in it 
— of the anonymous picture of the " Angel Raphael and 
Tobias," No. 781 — in which the angel moves with the 
lightness of thistledown. The anonymous "Virgin and 
Child with two Angels " — No. 296 — which hangs next 
also has great charm. 

And then, having passed Pollaiuolo's great " St. Sebas- 
tian," we come to what is in some ways the most majestic 
work of art in the gallery — Michael Angelo's " Entomb- 
ment of Our Lord," No. 790, before which one stands 
amazed, such power is there in it, such a mastery of diffi- 



90 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

culties — difficulties of foreshortening which the giant 
created for himself for sheer joy of overcoming them. The 
other Michael Angelo, which also is unfinished, "The 
Madonna and Infant Christ, St. John the Baptist and 
Angels," No. 809, is less compelling but technically hardly 
less wonderful. Of neither picture can one ever tire ; while 
the Entombment makes almost everything else seem a 
little too facile. 

On the other side of the door leading into Room II we 
find another Filippino Lippi — richer in colour than was 
usual with him — the "Adoration of the Magi," No. 592, 
while close by he treats the same subject again — in No. 
1124 — which is full of quaint and pretty carefulness and 
fancy. And above is his father's subdued and beautiful 
"Vision of St. Bernard." Between them is a strong and 
realistic but not very pleasing "Procession to Calvary" 
by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio. Botticelli's very quaint and 
archaic "Nativity," No. 1034; his mournful "Madonna 
and Child," No. 782, with the beautiful landscape, to 
which I have referred and which is reproduced opposite 
page 218, and Piero de Cosimo's "Warrior," are all that 
remain. 

Room II is perhaps the sweetest in the whole Gallery 
— for here is Era Angelico, here is a simple piety untouched 
by worldliness. Here also Browning's readers, who stood 
before Andrea del Sarto's work in Room I, will find the 
other great painting monologist monk and genius and 
lover. Era Fihppo Lippi, teacher of Botticelli, and father 
(by Lucrezia Buti, bride of Christ, whom his duty was to 
help towards sanctity) of Filippino Lippi, a greater painter 
than himself, whose darling Madonnas we have seen. One 
recognises the type in the father's pictures, but Eilippino 
perfected it. Era Eilippo Lippi's great pictures in Room 
II are No. 666, "The Annunciation," and No. 667 "St. 



il 



GOZZOLI 91 

John the Baptist with Other Saints." But it is to Fra 
AngeUco that Room II really belongs — to the painter of 
No. 663 — " Christ and the Heavenly Host," so simple 
and sweet, and filled with such adorable little people. 
The other Fra Angelico is quite small — an " Adoration 
of the Magi," No. 582, but it is very right. Here also 
is the " Virgin and Child Enthroned," by his pupil Benozzo 
Gozzoli. This picture, though not the equal of Francesca's 
"Nativity," has much sweetness and simplicity; and the 
Uttle goldfinches again are not forgotten. Gozzoli is the 
painter also of the very artless and quaint "Rape of 
Helen" (No. 591), in which we see Helen, the world's 
desire, for whom Trojan and Greek blood was to run like 
water, perched, a cheery little innocent romp, on the 
shoulders of her captor. The other pictures in this room 
which I would mention are No. 1155, Matteo di Giovanni's 
spirited "Assumption," a very heartening if rather arti- 
ficial work; No. 1331, the "Virgin and Child" of Ber- 
nadino Fungai, with its lovely grave colours; and No. 
227, by an unknown painter of the fifteenth century, " St. 
Jerome in the Desert " — once an altar piece at Fiesole — 
which I always like for the little kneehng girl with the 
red cap. 

The third room, which is purely Tuscan again, is famous 
for its circular Botticelli, No. 275, " The Virgin and Child, 
St. John the Baptist and an Angel," a picture which is 
found in reproduction in so many of the houses of one's 
friends to-day. Here also is perhaps the most darling of 
Filippino Lippi's darling Virgins, nursing a little human 
Christ busy with a pomegranate, and a little St. John 
beside him. " Great destinies may be in store for us, 
the little Christ seems to be saying : " yes ; but meanwhile 
here is a pomegranate." Of a very different quaUty, un- 



92 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

like anything else in the collection, is Ucello's "Battle of 
Sant' Egidio," No. 583, a decorative scene of colour and 
animation, the curious grave harmony of which I suppose 
has never been surpassed. Its charm is however quite 
incommunicable : it must be seen, and seen again and 
again. I visit it, whenever I go to the National Gallery, 
both on entering and on leaving. Above it hangs a famous 
work by an unknown Tuscan — " Venus reclining with 
her Cupids," Botticellian in influence and very mas- 
terly. Opposite is the largest Botticelli in the gallery, 
and not altogether a happy one, I think — " The Assump- 
tion of the Virgin," No. 1126 — for this was a painter who 
ought never to have crowded his canvas or to have painted 
small. The lilies springing from the tomb make it 
memorable: these and the distant view of Florence the 
beautiful. But personally I would rather have his " Por- 
trait of a Young Man" just inside Room I. Among 
the other minor portraits in the National Gallery one of 
the most fascinating is No. 1230, here, — the " Portrait of 
a Girl" by Domenico del Ghirlandaio. To this quiet 
Italian face I return again and again. We are weak in 
the National Gallery in Ghirlandaio's work: we own only 
this portrait and one other near it, a boy: nothing to 
compare with the Louvre's treasures. One other picture 
I would mention. No. 701, by Justus of Padua, a small 
tryptich which I like for the little woman at a wash tub 
in one corner. 

With Room IV we journey north for a while and come to 
hints of domesticity and a homelier landscape — for Room 
IV belongs to the early Flemish masters. The cheerful 
piety of Francesca and Fra Angelico, and the sheer love of 
innocent beauty of Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, are no 
more. A note of sadness has come in, a northern earnest- 




THE ENTOMBMENT 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



THE EARLY FLEMINGS 93 

ness, and also the beginning of a realistic interest in hu- 
manity. The full materialism of later Netherlandish 
art is not yet : there is still much left of the rapt religious 
spirit; but these early Flemish painters have an eye on 
this world too. It is in their minds that living men and 
women deserve painting as much as the hierarchy of 
heaven. We find realism at its most extreme in No. 944, 
the " Two Usurers " of Marinus van Romerswael, a miracle 
of minuteness without compensating allurement of any 
kind. Joachim Patinir introduces us to domestic landscape 
in Nos. 1084 and 1082, both incidents in the life of the 
Virgin but more interesting for their backgrounds of fairy- 
tale scenery, busy with romantic Chaucerian happenings. 
Even more remarkable as innovation is No. 1298, from the 
same hand, one of the most exquisite pieces of colour in the 
whole collection — a river scene frankly, and nothing else, 
painted four hundred years ago. This Patinir, whose work 
is not often to be seen, was a friend of Diirer, who painted 
his portrait and no doubt encouraged him. The three 
portraits by Mabuse, or Jan Gossaert — Nos. 656 and 946 
and 1689 — all show his great and rare power; No. 654, 
"The Magdalen Reading," possibly by a follower of Rogier 
Van der Weyden, draws the eye continually by its sweet 
gravity. For Van der Weyden himself look at No. G64, 
" The Deposition in the Tomb " (reproduced on the oppo- 
site page), a beautiful work lacking nothing of the true re- 
ligious feeling, a feeling that is noticeable again with no 
diminution in the "Virgin and Infant Christ Enthroned 
in a Garden," No. 686, by Hans Memhng, one of the 
greatest of the Flemings. But the greatest of all, and also 
one of the earliest, was the painter of No. 186, that amaz- 
ing achievement of human skill, that portrait of Jean and 
Jeanne Arnolfini from which sprang half the Dutch school. 



94 A WANDERER IN LONDON 



^ 



Earliest and best ; for no later painter ever surpassed this 
forerunner panel, in precision, in colour or in sincerity. 
"Johannes de Eyck fuit hie 1434" is its inscription. I 
give a reproduction opposite page 234, but the picture 
must be seen if its fascination is really to be felt. Greater 
minds than Van Eyck's may have arisen in the Nether- 
lands — Rembrandt's for example ; deeper minds — 
Quintin Matsys' and Memling's, for example; broader 
minds — Van Dyck's for example ; but never a more 
interesting one. I look upon Van Eyck's pencil drawing 
of St. Barbe, in the Antwerp Museum, as one of the most 
beautiful of the works of man; and this picture that we 
are standing before at this moment, and the Virgin and 
Child with a saint at the Louvre, with its wonderful river 
and town scene below the ramparts and children peeping 
over, could have been painted only by one who loved 
his fellow-men and to whom the world was new every 
morning. Room IV when all is said is Van Eyck's. 
Before leaving it I would draw attention to some of the 
pictures by unknown painters, particularly to No. 653, 
portraits of a man and his wife, very masterly ; to No. 943, 
a portrait of a man; to Nos. 1078 and 1079, which are 
very interesting ; and lastly to the fascinating portrait of 
a lady. No. 1433. 

Room V, belonging to the Ferrarese and Bolognese 
schools, interests me very little. It does not seem quite 
genuine, and it comes badly after Room IV and before 
Room VI. I am left cold by Cosimo Tura, by Grandi, 
and for the most part by Tisio, although his " Madonna 
and Child Enthroned," No. 671, is very sweet; but how 
far from the humble spirit of Room II have we travelled ! 
(We shall however travel farther soon, for we are coming 
to the Venetians ; yet the Venetians had more to offer in 
its place.) Even Francia, before whose "Virgin and two 



FRANCESCA AGAIN 95 

angels weeping over the dead body of Christ," No. 180, 
one of the best-known pictures in the National Gallery, 
reverent spectators are always to be seen — even Francia I 
find myself doubting. I do not seem to see genuine piety 
in this picture, nor does its technique touch me. I like his 
No. 179 better, but it has a kind of repellent perfection. 
The other Francia (or Raibohni, as he is in the catalogue). 
No. 638, has a fine colour. The L'Ortolano on the oppo- 
site wall is powerful and interesting, with some almost 
Dutch detail in it ; but the most interesting picture of all 
in this room is perhaps No. 1217, the curious little treat- 
ment of "The IsraeHtes gathering Manna." 

Room I taken as a whole is to me the most interesting 
and beautiful room in the Gallery, but many persons would 
place Room VI higher — for its Raphaels. Here however 
we should part company, for at the National Gallery 
Raphael with all his angelic perfection does not quite seize 
me. One of his pictures there indeed I think I dislike 
actively — the " St. Catherine " ; while the more than beau- 
tiful "Madonna degli Ansidei" does not touch me as say 
Fihppini Lippi's similar subject does in Room I — the pic- 
ture reproduced opposite page 200. In fact the Raphaels 
that I find most pleasing here are the little and wholly capti- 
vating "Vision of a Knight," No. 213, and the small 
Madonna and Children, No. 774. For Raphael in London 
I would always go to South Kensington, where the cartoons 
are. 

To my mind the most attractive treasures of Room VI 
are the Francescas, the Peruginos, and Ridolfo del Ghir- 
landaio's " Portrait of a Gentleman " — one of our bor- 
rowed treasures. Of Francesca's "Nativity" I have al- 
ready spoken, but would say here that almost chief among 
the old masters would it gain by being taken from its gold 



96 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

and framed in black. The gilt frame convention needs 
breaking down mercilessly again and again in this collection, 
but most of all, I think, in the case of this picture. Here 
also is Francesca's '' Baptism of Christ in the Jordan," No. 
665 — on the other side of the door leading from Room V — 
which is in its way, though not more ingratiating, more 
remarkable even than the "Nativity." Surely never did 
dove so brood before : nor — to take a purely technical 
point, disregarding the spirit of the work — not even in 
modern realistic art has any man ever so divested himself 
of his shirt as the figure in the background. And the 
sweetness of the whole, and the lovely colouring of it ! 

Most conspicuous of the Peruginos is the famous Altar 
Piece, of which I give a reproduction (but how tame !) 
opposite page 222 — " The Virgin Adoring the Infant 
Christ." This picture is notable not only for its beauty 
and mastery, but for being the first joyous exultation in 
pure colour which we have seen. The picture burns into 
the mind : to think of Room VI is to feel its warmth and 
content. Incidentally one might say that there are no 
more charming boys in any Renaissance work of art than 
this Michael and this Tobias. Other pictures byPerugino 
(whom the catalogue knows as Vannucci) are his faint and 
lovely fresco "The Adoration of the Shepherds," which 
one might say had lent all its own colour to the great 
tryptich, and No. 181, the very sweet little "Virgin and 
Christ with the infant St. John," who is always a sweet 
figure, but here the solidest little boy in Italian art. The 
baby Christ plays very prettily with his mother's finger. 
Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio's portrait on the screen, so quiet 
and persuasive and believable-in, is only a loan — one of 
the many generous loans of Mr. George Salting, among the 
others being a curious portrait of Costanza de' Medici by the 



THE VENETIANS 97 

greater Ghirlandaio, a terrible head of Salome by Luciani, 
a nobleman by Cariani and a girl's head by Francia. 

Among other pictures in this room that I would name are 
Bertucci's " Glorification of the Virgin," No. 282, with the 
two cherubs beneath, before whom all mothers always pause 
and murmur a little ; Luca Signorelli's fascinatingly low- 
toned allegory, "The Triumph of Chastity," No. 910, with 
the wonderful moving procession at the back and the spirit 
of the Renaissance almost vocal in it ; the curious Griselda 
series, so rich in colour and quaint in incident and char- 
acter; the extraordinarily interesting and modern Pintu- 
ricchio — No. 911, "The Return of Ulysses to Penelope"; 
the "Annunciation," No. 1104, by Giannicola Manni — a 
picture which by its individual colour scheme and cool 
spaces attracts the eye immediately one enters the room, 
even although the great Perugino is close by ; Piuturicchio's 
adorable " Madonna and Child " — No. 703 — one of the 
sweetest pictures in the Gallery; Santo's "Madonna and 
Child," No. 751; and Luca Signorelh's great "Nativity," 
No. 1133. 

In Room VII we come frankly and completely to the 
men of the world — to the Venetians : great masterful 
gentlemen who painted for the Doge rather than for 
Heaven. Occasionally they took a religious subject, but 
they brought little religion to it. Colour came first. Only 
in one work here — and that a very little picture on a screen 
— do I find more than a little trace of the simple piety 
that surrounded us in Room II: the "Crucifixion" of 
Antonella di Messina, No. 1166. One is doubtful even of 
Bellini. Even with him one feels paint came first. But 
we must not let this disturb us : is not paint in the thing ? 

The greatest names in the Venetian room are Titian 
and Tintoretto, Bellini and Moroni, Giorgione and Cima, 



98 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Moretto and Paolo Veronese, Sebastian del Piombo and 
Catena. I suppose the glories of the room are Tintoretto's 
"Origin of the Milky Way" and Titian's "Bacchus and 
Ariadne," although Charles Lamb would, I feel sure, still 
remain faithful to No. 1, Piombo's "Raising of Lazarus" 
in which Michael Angelo was thought to have a hand and 
which is the picture that began the National Gallery. The 
Tintoretto seems to me the rarest work of art here — the 
most amazing, the least copyable; but its appeal is not 
simple. Titian's Bacchus is simpler and more gorgeous ; 
but I always feel that this Tintoretto transcends it. Com- 
parisons are odious : it is better to delight in both. The 
National Gallery is strong in Titian: it has his "Holy 
Family," his "Bacchus and Ariadne," his "Madonna and 
Child" (the blue of the mountains in the distance !), the 
new portrait of Aretino. Of Titian, the glorious, the gor- 
geous, one cannot have too much; but I should hesitate 
to say the same of Paolo Veronese, who when he is paint- 
ing his vast panoramic efforts always suggests the con- 
tributor to the Salon carried out to his highest power. 
His "Saint Helena" (reproduced opposite page 156) is to 
me one of the most beautiful of pictures, but I grudge somv 
of his square yards. 

If one had to name the most charming pictures in this 
room I should pick out Giovanni Bellini's " Infant Christ 
and the Virgin," No. 599, on one of the screens (a reproduc- 
tion of which will be found on the opposite page) and Gior- 
gione's " Knight in Armour," No. 269, on another screen. 
Bellini is always interesting, always the consummate 
craftsman, always intelligent and distinguished. His finest 
picture here is, I think, " Christ's Agony in the Garden," 
No. 726, which is indescribably wonderful in colour and 
almost escapes the Venetian worldliness ; his most modern 




O 



Moroni 99 

painting, which might almost have proceeded from a 
London or Parisian studio to-day, is his " St. Dominic," 
No. 1440, with its decorative ingenuity; but his most 
charming picture is undoubtedly this " Virgin and Child. " 
The Virgin's face is a little commonplace but very human : 
the Infant Christ is the sleepiest baby I ever saw : the 
landscape and fleeting fine-weather clouds could not be 
more smiling and delightful. The work is adorably gay 
and masterly in every touch. I have however found many 
mothers who prefer his No. 280; but they are wrong. 
The little Giorgione (or Barbarelli, as the catalogue calls 
him) once hung on the wall of Samuel Rogers, the poet, in 
St. James's Place. It is one of the pictures one would 
certainly hasten to carry off if London fell into the hands 
of an enemy and looting set in. One could carry it easily. 

To two other painters I would draw attention in this 
room : both portrait painters, Moroni and Moretto. Mo- 
roni is well represented, and I have, I think, chosen his best 
picture for reproduction : " The Tailor," No. 697. I never 
tire of this melancholy Italian bending over his cloth, whom 
one seems to know better than many of one's living ac- 
quaintance. His " Portrait of an Italian Nobleman " — 
No. 1316 — I should put next — so superb and distinguished 
is it, so interesting a harmony of black and grey. (Surely 
Velasquez must have seen it.) Comparable with it is the 
"Italian Nobleman," No. 1025, by Moretto (whom the 
catalogue calls Bonvicino), another of the great portraits. 

Among other pictures to which I return again are No. 
636, Palma's "Portrait of a Poet"; No. 1105, Lotto's 
"Portrait of the Protonotary" with its curious Surrey 
common vista; No. 1455, Bellini's "The Circumcision," 
glorious in colour: No. 234, Catena's "Warrior adoring 
the Infant Christ," a large rich picture with a lovely 

LOFC. 



100 A WANDERER IN LONDON 






evening glow and real simplicity in it : Cima's " Incredulity 
of St. Thomas," No. 816, with a very charming un-Italian 
landscape, that Crome might have painted, seen through 
the left window ; No. 173, Jacopo da Ponte's " Portrait of 
a Gentleman " ; No. 1141, a head by Antonella di Messina ; 
No. 1160, a very beautiful little Giorgione; No. 1450, a 
sombre Piombo; and Romanino's very rich tryptich. 

In Room VIII we find earlier Venetian and Paduan 
painters — chief of them the great Andrea Mantegna, for 
whose work in England, however, Hampton Court is the 
place. He is represented at the National Gallery by a very 
beautiful " Virgin and Child with St. John the Baptist and 
the Magdalene," No. 274; by the amazing "Triumph of 
Scipio," in monochrome, a masterpiece of psychological 
painting; and by the "Agony in the Garden," curiously 
like Bellini's in the next room, and perhaps stronger but 
far less superficially attractive. The painter who is repre- 
sented here most fully is Carlo Crevelli, in whom I seem to 
see more ingenuity than greatness, but who certainly drew 
divinely and made very interesting pictures. All his work 
bears careful scrutiny, as he had an engaging fancy; but 
beside Mantegna he is mere confectionery. The painter 
here whom one loves best is Vittore Pissano — for the sheer 
joy of his "St. Anthony and St. George," so gay and 
pretty, and the gentle simplicity of his "Vision of St. 
Eustace." 

Room IX — Schools of Lombardy and Parma — seems 
to me to contain a larger proportion of pictures not of the 
first rank than any other ; but the fault is atoned for by 
its two great masterpieces — Leonardo da Vinci's " Virgin 
of the Rocks " and Correggio's " Mercury teaching Cupid 
in the presence of Venus, " reproduced opposite page 206. 
Any room with these two pictures in it is in a position to 



LEONARDO AND CORREGGIO 101 

laugh at criticism. " The Virgin of the Rocks " is the only 
Leonardo in the National Gallery : the Louvre is far richer, 
for it has not only a counterpart of this picture, but also 
the " Monna Lisa " ; but London has the " Holy Family " 
in the Diploma Gallery, which I reproduce opposite page 
294, and there is nothing anywhere more lovely than that. 
Of the " Virgin of the Rocks " I have nothing to say. It 
is — and that is all. Correggio (whom the catalogue calls 
Allegri) is represented by three pictures, of which No. 10 
is the jewel. I know of no painting of the nude which so 
grows on one as this : its power, its soft maturity, its 
charm. It becomes daily more and more beautiful; the 
little figure of Cupid becomes more and more roguish. 
Another neighbouring picture which I would mention 
here is No. 1350, an unknown "Virgin and Child," with 
its curiously modern and worldly but very charming Virgin. 
Among the other painters in this room, the greatest is 
perhaps Borgognone, who made beautiful true things; 
and here also are Boccaccino, and De Solario and Luini, 
but you must go to the Wallace Collection for the last. 

The Octagonal Hall, between Rooms IV, VIII, IX and 
XV, completes the collection of old Italian pictures: for 
the later Italians we must wait till the next chapter. The 
largest works here are a series of four allegories by Paolo 
Veronese, all of which are amazing in their bold drawing, 
and one at least, " Unfaithfulness," has a fine distinction in 
its colouring. The most attractive of the four is the 
" Scorn," but none really can be entitled companionable. 
They prove, however, the greatness of the man. Here also 
is another Belhni — No. 1235, "The Blood of the Re- 
deemer " — with its quaint little kneeling angel ; two grave 
and richly coloured saints by Girolama da Santa Croce ; a 
rather fascinating girl's head by Bissolo ; and two charming 



102 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

scenes in the legend of Trajan and the Widow by an 
unknown painter of the Veronese school. But the most 
remarkable pictures to my mind are the three scenes in the 
life of Christ by Francesco Mantegna, the son of the great 
Andrea, especially Nos. 1381 and 639, which are full of 
interest and charm. Their light is beautiful. The two 
portraits on the same screen are interesting too ; and on the 
other screen is a pretty Francesco Morone. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND THE NORTHERN PAINTERS 

IT is at the doorway of Room X — our backs to the 
Leonardo and the Correggio in Room IX — that divin- 
ity leaves us. There will be great art in the remaining 
rooms : high seriousness and distinction ; but nothing like 
Leonardo. We are about to awake from our dream of 
heaven in the warm south and open our eyes in a northern 
world of men and women. Between these two sections of 
the National Gallery — the old Italians and the Northerners 
— there should be a cooling chamber, as at a Turkish Bath, 
or else one should begin at the other end, at Room XXII, 
and finish at Room I. Yes, that is what one should do. 
It is all wrong to follow art chronologically from its fount 
to recent days : the true progress is from recent days to its 
fount, from complexity to simplicity, from sophistication to 
piety. Or better still, perhaps, one should not combine the 
north and the south in one visit at all, but confine each 
visit to a single group. 

I hope I shall not be misunderstood about Dutch art, for 
which I have the greatest admiration. What I mean is 
that there is no preparation for a loving appreciation of it 
so unsuitable as the contemplation of the old Italian masters. 
No emotional student of the Umbrians and the Venetians, 
no one whose eyes have just been filled with their colour 
and glory, is in a fit state to understand the dexterity and 

103 



104 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

homeliness of Gerard Dou and Terburg, De Hooch and 
Jan Steen, the austere distinction of Van Dyck, or even the 
stupendous power of Rembrandt. Least of all is he able 
to be fair to Peter Paul Rubens. A different attitude is 
expected by Italian masters and the northern masters : the 
Italians ask for wonder, delight ; the Dutch for curiosity, 
almost inquisitiveness. It is the difference between rap- 
ture and interest. Always, however, excepting Rembrandt : 
he stands alone. 

With Room X we say goodbye to religion. Tuscans, 
Umbrians, Ferrarese, Parmese, Lombardians, Sienese — 
these found in the Scriptures their principal sources of in- 
spiration; these painted the Holy child, the Virgin Mary 
and the blessed company of saints, with a persistence which 
I for one cannot too much admire and rejoice in. Look- 
ing to Rome and Romish patrons for their livelihood, they 
had little choice, more particularly in the earlier days when 
simplicity was in their very blood, nor would they have 
wished a wider field. We may say, at any rate of the 
Tuscans and Umbrians and Sienese, that their colours were 
mixed and their panels made smooth for the glory of their 
Lady. But in Room X we are among painters whose art 
was the servant of the State rather than the Church. Fare- 
well to mild Madonnas and chubby Christs : farewell to 
holy families and the company of the aureoled. Art has 
descended to earth : become a citizen, almost a housewife. 
Heaven is unimportant : what is important is Holland and 
the Dutch. Let there be Dutch pictures ! A religious 
subject may creep in now and then, but (unless Rem- 
brandt holds the brush or the burin) it will not be a re- 
ligious picture. Worldliness has set in thoroughly. We 
have travelled very far from Fra Angelico and Francesca's 
"Nativity." 



"HOUSEHOLD HEATH'* 105 

This reminds me that after I had put that question to 
the dinner table about one's favourite Itahan picture in 
the National Gallery, I followed it by another bearing 
upon one's favourite picture on the northern side, knowing 
perfectly well myself which I would take were I limited 
only to one. Now here again opinions differed. One 
choice was Rembrandt's landscape with Tobias and the 
Angel in the foreground; another was the Rokeby 
" Venus " ; another Hobbema's " Avenue at Middelhar- 
nis " ; another Gainsborough's " Mrs. Siddons " ; another 
" The Fighting Temeraire " : while we were told that a 
certain illustrious artist whose taste should be supreme 
had once named George Stubbs' "Landscape with a 
Gentleman holding his Horse" as the picture he would 
soonest carry off. Then I made my choice — Old Crome's 
" Household Heath " ; and I regret to say that, such is 
human imitativeness, three or four of the others at once 
went back on their own selection and substituted mine. 
But I have no doubt whatever that to me this landscape 
is the most fascinating picture in the National Gallery 
not by an Italian master. 

We now come into Room X. 

Weak as the National Gallery is, as we shall see, in 
German art and French art, no one can deny the thorough- 
ness and superlative excellence of its three Netherland 
rooms. The English have always appreciated Dutch art. 
To have seventeen Rembrandts is alone no small matter; 
but we have also three Hals', and three De Hoochs, and 
three Jan Steens, and three Terburgs, and probably the 
best Hobbema that exists, and the best of Van der Heist's 
single figures. I doubt too if Van Dyck ever surpassed 
the distinction and power of his Cornelius Van der Geest 
in the large room which we are now entering. 



106 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

We come to Rembrandt instantly, just inside on the 
left : where are his fascinating girl's head, No. 237, with 
the amused expression and ruddy tints of health, and his 
" Old Lady " in a ruff, No. 775 — one of those wonderful 
heads that come right out of the canvas and seem always 
to have been our personal acquaintances. I mention the 
other Rembrandts here — the sombre " Jew Merchant," 
No. 51 ; the two portraits of himself, as a young man and an 
old man — Nos. 672 and 221 ; the " Old Man " next 672 ; 
the "Burgomaster" next that; the other "Old Lady," 
also in a ruff, No. 1675, a little wizened but immortal; 
and the " Jewish Rabbi " — No. 190. These are the 
greatest of them, and these alone make our National 
Gallery priceless. There are also " The Woman Taken in 
Adultery" and "The Adoration of the Shepherds," two of 
the pictures with which the collection began: both lighted 
in that way which added the word Rembrandtesque to the 
language; the masterly "Woman Bathing," one of his 
most brilliant oil sketches (look at the way the chemise is 
painted) ; and lastly the beautiful grave landscape — beyond 
Ruysdael or any of the regular Dutch landscape painters : 
"Tobias and the Angel," No. 72 — a picture which always 
draws me to it. It is stupendous — this man's mastery 
of his means. 

I always wonder if No. 757 — " Christ Blessing the Little 
Children," which is said to be of the school of Rembrandt, 
was not painted by Nicolas Maes. The child in the fore- 
ground seems straight from his brush, and he was Rem- 
brandt's pupil. We come to him with No. 1247, "The 
Card Players," a very fascinating and powerful work, very 
near Rembrandt indeed, which hangs between Van der 
Heist's curious portrait of a lady. No. 1248, and Cuyp's 
great landscape in a golden light, No. 53, with the horse- 



NORTHERN MASTERPIECES 107 

man in the red coat — also one of the original pictures in 
the National Gallery and still one of the pleasantest. The 
Rubens near it — " The Abduction of the Sabine Women " 
— which I for one find tedious and less interesting than 
his two landscapes, Nos. 157 and 66, was also an initial 
picture; but of Rubens I find it hard to say anything. 
The largest picture in the room is Van Dyck's portrait of 
Charles I on horseback, but it is not equal in greatness to 
his beautiful head of Cornelius Van der Geest (reproduced 
opposite page 192), one of the greatest of all portraits. 

We come now to smaller works — Jan van Vost's very 
attractive portrait of a girl. No. 1137; and Nicolas Maes' 
"Idle Servant" and Peter de Hooch's "Dutch House- 
court," both triumphs of domestic art, and the Peter de 
Hooch — as always — a miracle of lighting ; but both men 
are better in Room XII. Here also are some fine Ruys- 
daels, Van Dyck's very interesting and beautiful " Miracu- 
lous Draught of Fishes," another Albert Cuyp, a Jan Both 
(No. 1917) that might have given hints to Gainsborough 
and Linnell ; a very fascinating little Van der Poel — No. 
1061, and a Nicholas Berchem one would love to carry 
away — No. 1005 ; and, on the screens, three of Gerard 
Don's minute but great portraits, Terburg's minute but 
amazing " Congress of Munster," one of the most extra- 
ordinary of human feats, and Van der Heist's very 
beautiful and serene portrait of a lady, in which black 
satin and lace are painted as they perhaps never will be 
again. 

In Room XI are more masterpieces, chief of which are 
the three portraits by Frans Hals, all beggaring one's store 
of adjectives and all making all other painters of the ruddy 
human face, even Rembrandt himself, almost fumblers. 
No one so perpetuated the fife of the eye and the cheek as 



108 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

this jovial Haarlemmer. Vermeer also hangs in this room 

— in one picture known to be by him, No. 1383, "A Young 
Lady at a Spinet," which has all his magical skill and dis- 
tinction but is artificial and to me not very attractive ; and 
also, I think, in the boy in the new picture attributed to 
him — No. 1699, "The Lesson." Only Vermeer, one 
feels, could have painted that boy's hair and temple. Who- 
ever the artist was, he was a great genius. Here also hangs 
Terburg's "Portrait of a Gentleman," in which black cloth 
is painted with a distinction that I have never seen else- 
where — a picture from which Whistler must have learned 
much. I would also mention a little Schalcken — a gem 

— in which an old woman scours brass. 
Immediately inside Room XII is the best of the Peter 

de Hoochs — the "Interior of a Dutch House," No. 834, 
reproduced opposite page 66, most marvellously lighted 
and alive ; and near it is the best National Gallery Metsu, 
No. 839, " The Music Lesson," in which he is again faithful 
to the type we observed at the Wallace Collection. Between 
them is another Terburg — very dexterous — " The Guitar 
Lesson," but not the equal of the Terburg we have just 
seen. Rubens' " Triumph of Silenus " and his " Chapeau 
de Poil" both hang here, the "Triumph," one of his most 
tremendous orgies in flesh painting and voluptuous brio; 
and then we come to the first of the Jan Steens — also a 
music lesson. No. 856, where the girl is painted — face, 
dress and hands — as this inspired tippler alone could 
paint. And the music master is superb. Some exquisite 
Adrian Van der Veldes and Wouvermans, another Peter 
de Hooch, a charming Karel du Jardin and a very fascinat- 
ing view of Cologne by Jan van der Heyden bring us to 
Hobbema's great landscape" The Avenue at Middelharnis " 
(reproduced opposite page 182), which exerts a spell which 



GERARD DOU 109 

I cannot explain, but which never weakens. Close by is a 
vast Koninck which gathers up scores of miles of Holland 

— No. 836 — and beneath it the most marvellous example 
of Dutch minuteness in the collection — " The Poulterer's 
Shop" by Gerard Dou. The blanket, the hare, the hen's 
eye, the two faces — these surely are in their way as remark- 
able as any efforts of man's ingenuity. A fine broad head 
by Rembrandt hangs next, by way of contrast. Passing 
many minor masterpieces, including another Jan Steen 
and No. 820, another golden Berchem, very like a Wilson, 
we come to two of the smallest but best pictures here 

— Albert Cuyp's piebald horse, No. 1683, and Nicolas 
Maes' No. 159, a great example of fine painting and sym- 
pathy. At the end of the room are several large land- 
scapes — a Cuyp, a Koninck, and the grandest of all the 
many Ruysdaels — "View over a flat wooded country." 
Close by are smaller and very beautiful landscapes by 
Wynants, Both and Everdingen. And so we come to an 
end; but such is the perfection of the Dutch painting 
that, as in Rooms X and XI, I might have supplied more 
of the other pictures with superlatives too. 

In Room XIII, which belongs to the late Italians, I 
must confess to some weariness. Guido Reni I find too 
sentimental, and Canaletto monotonous. Guardi is here, 
it is true, but not as he is at the Wallace Collection, except 
in No. 1054, and here is Salvator Rosa, tremendous but 
not sublime. Canaletto's "Landscape with Ruins," No. 
135, is happier than his more architectural work, and 
his "Eton College" could not be better, while a fine blue 
burns in No. 1059 — " San Pietro de Castello, Venice." 
His 127 and 163 are undoubtedly fine, but one feels he is 
over-represented. Of the Caraccis the two scenes in the 
Ufe of Silenus seem to me his most interesting work, and 



no A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Guercino's " Dead Christ " is in the grand manner even if 
it is not grand. A little gay landscape by Zais — No. 1297 
— stays in the mind. 

Room XIV brings us to Spain and once again to super- 
lative greatness and distinction; for here are nine or 
perhaps ten Velasquez' — including his " Admiral Pulido- 
Paraja, " his "Boar Hunt," and his "Betrothal." It is 
no small thing to possess these Velasquez' and those at 
the Wallace Collection (notably "The Lady with a 
Fan ") ; but when the " Rokeby Venus " was added this 
year our prestige rose still higher. Personally I do not 
derive so much pleasure from this picture as from those in 
the master's prevailing manner : it seems too much like his 
contribution to the Salon: it seems to me to have the 
least touch of vulgarity, which, before one saw it, one 
would have said was impossible in anything from that 
commanding and distinguished brush ; but even feeling like 
this, one can realise how rare a possession the "Venus" 
is and be proud that England owns it. When I think 
of Velasquez in our two great collections the pictures that 
always rise before the inward eye are the " Admiral " here, 
and the " Lady with a Fan " at Hertford House — both 
reproduced in this book. The "Admiral" is one of the 
world's great pictures: a gentleman's picture pre-emi- 
nently. Fascinating in another way is the brilliant "Be- 
trothal," which I always like to remember was once the 
property of Sir Edwin Landseer, who, if his own art was 
over direct and primitive, could appreciate the masterly 
subtlety and alluring half tones of this Spanish grandee. 
The "Dead Warrior" below the " Betrothal" is only at- 
tributed to Velasquez ; but whoever painted it was a great 
man. The "Boar Fight" that hangs next it is immense 
and overpowering, but it always seems to me to lack air. 



MURILLO AND HOLBEIN 111 

Against the vivid "Sketch of a Duel in the Prado," close 
by, no such charge can be brought. The other Velasquez' 
are two Philips, "Christ at the Column," with the ex- 
quisite kneeling child, and " Christ in the House of Mar- 
tha," with the haunting strong sullen face of the servant 
girl : — altogether a marvellous collection. 

Murillo is here too, in both his moods — the sweet 
pietistic mood in which he painted the "Holy Family" 
and " St. John and the Lamb," so irresistibly warm and 
rich, and the worldly and masterful mood which gave us 
his marvellous " Boy Drinking " — that wonderfully living 
head. It remains only to mention Zurbaran — who might 
be said to blend Velasquez and Murillo, and who had 
one of the surest hands among all painters ; Goya's brill- 
iant portrait of " Dona Isabel Corbo de Porcel " ; and the 
charming little " Virgin and Child " of Morales. 

Room XV, which belongs to the German school, con- 
tains but a meagre store. What it has is good ; but there 
is little of it and the most beautiful picture of all, Holbein's 
" Christina, Princess of Denmark," one of the sweetest 
and serenest of all portraits, is only lent — not this time 
by the beneficent Mr. Salting but by the Duke of Norfolk. 
May he never reclaim it ! The show picture here is 
Holbein's " Ambassadors," which is a great work but hard. 
Nearer to one's heart comes Diirer's portrait of his father, 
No. 1938, a little like Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio's " Portrait 
of a Gentleman" in Room VI, and very satisfying. As 
with the Flemish school in Room IV, so with the German 
here, many of the most interesting and beautiful pictures 
are by unknown hands : such as No. 658 " Death of the 
Virgin," No. 687 "The Santa Veronica," No. 705 "Three 
Saints," No. 707 "Two Saints," No. 722 "Portrait of a 
Lady," No. 1049 "The Crucifixion," and No. 1087 "The 



112 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Mocking of Christ." These are remarkable either for sim- 
pHcity or charm or realism, or a blend of all. One should 
notice too No. 291, "The Portrait of a Young Lady," by 
Lucas Cranach, a very striking face. 

The two rooms that follow, Nos. XVI and XVII, serve 
only to show how poor in great French painting our 
National Gallery is. The Wallace Collection and the 
lonides Collection (at South Kensington) help to make up 
the deficiency ; but it is to me a matter for regret, almost 
shame, that so far as the English nation is concerned the 
Barbizon School might never have put brush to palette. 
Millet, Corot, Daubigny, Troyon, Rousseau, Courbet, 
Lepage — the National Gallery knows none of them.^ Nor 
does it know Watteau or Ingres. In fact its two French 
rooms, were it not for Claude and the Poussins, would be 
grotesque. But with such landscapes as the Claudes (some 
of which were among the few pictures bought in 1824 from 
John Julius Angerstein with which to start this great col- 
lection) and the " Calling of Abraham " by Gaspard Pous- 
sin (called Dughet in the catalogue, where Claude will be 
found under Gellee) our credit, if not saved, is yet not wholly 
lost. For the rest, there is the prettiness of Greuze and 
Madame le Brun; and an interesting and masterly piece 
of still life by Chardin. 

It is in Room No. XVI that the two Turners hang, to 
show to the world how much better he held himself than 
Gellee. Room for both without this comparison: but if 
such a competitive plan had been the rule, Wilson might 
have hung a picture beside No. 61 and not feared the 
result. 

Among the many Sir Joshuas in Room XVTII, the first 
of the British school — all fine, all touched with grandeur 
— I have chosen for reproduction the " Portrait of Two 
' A Diaz has just been added. 




PORTRAIT OF TWO GENTLEMEN 

AFTER SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS' PICTURE IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



REYNOLDS AND ROMNEY 113 

Gentlemen " (No. 754) because it has always fascinated me 
most. But I would not call it greater perhaps than one or 
two others — the Johnson, for example, or the Keppel, or 
the Lord Heathfield, or the very haunting Anne Countess 
of Albemarle. In the same room are such famous mothers' 
pictures as the "Age of Innocence" and the "Angels' 
Heads." London is extraordinarily rich in Reynolds': 
here, at the Wallace Collection (where they are all beauti- 
ful women), at the National Portrait Gallery, and at the 
Diploma Gallery, Abundance has always marked the 
greatest English artists, whether with the brush or the 
pen, the abundance which we find in Reynolds and Turner 
and Constable, in Shakespeare and Scott, in Fielding and 
Thackeray and Dickens — the large manner. 

The other picture in this room that I reproduce is 
Romney's "Lady with a Child" (No. 1667), which I have 
chosen for its charm and for the amazing vitality of the 
little girl, who is as real, as living, as any figure ever 
painted, although I do not suggest that the picture is 
greater technically than his portrait of Lady Craven, or 
"The Parson's Daughter," close by, or the famous sketch 
of Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante. Its claims are, how- 
ever, more urgent — for a mother and child (and such a 
child) have ultimately — as the great masters knew — a 
deeper appeal than any woman alone, however beautiful, 
can have. Another interesting Romney, painted with a 
hard brilliance of which he had the secret, hangs in the 
next room — Mr. and Mrs. William Lindon — among the 
landscapes, and might with advantage change places with 
a landscape in Room XVIII. For Raeburn, who was, I 
think, more powerful than Romney, but who does not ap- 
peal to so many, we must seek the staircase, where are his 
very distinguished " Lieut.-Col. McMurdo " (No. 1435) and 



114 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

his " Portrait of a Lady " (No. 1146) — both grave and fine 
and bearing all the traces of a master's hand. 

But Room XVIII to many persons is less noteworthy 
for the portraits I have named, than for No. 683, Gains- 
borough's Mrs. Siddons, in the large black hat and feathers 
and the blue and white striped dress. This is the first 
picture they look at and the last. Brilliant and masterly 
as it is, I must confess to a want of interest in it. I can 
stand before it quite impassive : it affects me like a kind of 
quintessential Burlington House — the Royal Academy 
portrait carried out to its higher power. Sir Thomas 
Lawrence's Mrs. Siddons in Room XX seems to me far 
greater. Before that one has a pulse. Nor do I care for 
Gainsborough's landscape. No. 925, in Room XVIII — all 
green wool — as much as for those in Room XX to which 
we shall come soon. 

First, however. Room XIX, which is Hogarth's : for 
here hang his most exquisite "Shrimp Girl," No. 1162, 
which to my mind proves him a great painter more con- 
vincingly than the " Marriage a la Mode " series or any of 
his satirical work or the "Sigismonda mourning over the 
heart of Guiscardo." " The Shrimp Girl," and the portrait 
of Mrs. Salter (No. 1663), and one or two of the heads of 
his servants (No. 1374), exhibit a Hogarth whose fine free 
vivid way with paint interests me far more than his delinea- 
tion of character and drama, where technically he seems to 
me to come far below Jan Steen. But Jan Steen could 
not have painted the Mrs. Salter : rather indeed does that, 
in its easy cool liquid colouring, suggest Vermeer of Delft. 
In Room XIX also are a superb Alexander Nasmyth ; the 
two pretty laundry maids by Morland's father; and one 
or two small canvases by the English Canaletto, Samuel 
Scott. 



OLD CROME 115 

I have not yet named the most exquisite thing of all, 
and after the "Shrimp Girl" and Mrs. Salter, the best: 
a little formal trifle by the gorgeous Richard Wilson, No. 
302, "View in Italy." The further description in the 
catalogue is, "An ancient Roman ruin, a mutilated statue 
leaning against a wall: two figures in the foreground." 
But O the joy of it. It is a picture to light a whole room. 
Below it is another, No. 1064, " On the River Wye," hardly 
less irresistible, and in the next room — Room XX — 
which we now enter, are several more, notably No. 1290, 
"Landscape with Figures," filled with the Wilsonic glory 
and the glow — the light that never was on sea or shore but 
inhabited his paint box. 

Room XX is not, however, W^ilson's room, wonderful as 
he is, nor should I call it Gainsborough's, although his 
landscapes also glorify its walls. In my mind Room XX 
stands as Old Crome's room — for here hangs " Household 
Heath," to me the most lovely landscape in English art, 
and the rarest. When I enter Room XX it becomes the 
abode of "Household Heath" and "Household Heath" 
only. It is that, I realise, which I came to see ; and when 
I go away it is with the golden light of it, the scented 
air of it, in my very system. Not all Turner's Titanic 
miracles, not all Constable's mighty transcriptions of Eng- 
lish weald and weather, not all Wilson's memories of the 
age of gold, affect me as Crome does in this picture and in 
"The Windmill." I do not say that he is greater than 
they ; but upon me he exerts a greater influence, to me he 
is more of a magician. Yet the best that the official cata- 
logue can say of him is that "he has often produced an 
admirable effect." Hy God! 

Another picture in Room XX — which is principally a 
landscape room — that I covet, but in a far less degree, is 



116 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Gainsborough's "View of Dedham," No. 1283, which has 
a lovely sky and is, I think, the best of this painter's land- 
scapes, although No. 80, "The Market Cart," is better 
known. Thomas Barker's Somerset landscape, No. 1039, 
is fine too. Here also is George Morland, whose work, 
however overlaid with peach bloom, is always lovable, and 
perhaps in its smiling prosperity and peace the completest 
contrast that could be found to the adjacent Copleys — 
"The Death of Chatham," "The Death of Pierson," and 
"The Siege of Gibraltar" (interesting for corroborating 
Reynolds' portrait of Lord Heathfield in the next room) — 
illustrations, as one might say, for The Graphic, carried out 
with amazing skill and spirit. One of these I recollect 
vividly as the first great picture I ever saw — for it used to 
be on the staircase, and as a child I wondered before it as 
we entered the National Gallery on the way to cooler 
things. That was thirty years ago, I suppose; but I re- 
member the impression still. 

If Room XX is Crome's room. Room XXI is Constable's. 
Crome's and Constable's — the conjunction is interesting : 
to me intensely so because in the " Household Heath " and 
more than one of the Constable sketches, but particularly 
the " Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk," No. 1819, "The Mill 
Stream," No. 1816, "The Country Lane," No. 1821, and 
"The Cornfield," No. 1065, one seems to see the germ of 
Barbizon landscape. As one so often sees the father in the 
son — a hint of the elder generation in a passing expression 
on even the infant's face — so as one looks at these pictures 
may one catch glimpses of Troy on and Rousseau, Diaz and 
Millet. The gleaner in the foreground of No. 1065 is 
sheer Millet. Constable's larger and more painty land- 
scapes, the "Flatford Mill," "The Hay Wain," and so 
forth, seem to me smaller efforts than some of his more 




LADY AND CHILD 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY ROMNEY IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



TURNER 117 

impressionistic and rapid sketches here and elsewhere — at 
South Kensington and the Diploma Gallery. There is less 
of inevitable masterly genius about them than in the little 
" Summer Afternoon after a Shower," No. 1815, which is 
terrific, and No. 1817, "The Gleaners," and No. 1822, 
"Dedham Vale." These are to me among the greatest 
works of English art. 

Room XXI contains also James Ward's view of Harlech 
Castle, in the grand manner, a vast landscape of much 
power and interest ; and here are six Turners which have 
overflowed from Room XXII, two of them of especial 
beauty — the "Bligh Sands," No. 496, and "Abingdon,'* 
No. 485, in a golden morning mist. It is to this room also 
that one must go for Wilkie's gentle translations of Jan 
Steen and Teniers into homely Doric, and for a beautiful 
mellow Cotman, " River Scene," No. 1111, of which I never 
tire. 

Of the Turners in Room XXII I feel myself incapable of 
adequate speech. One seems to be in the presence of some 
great natural force, at times almost a whirlwind. To me, 
to whom art is never so appealing as when it is still, re- 
poseful, shipwrecks and tempests are merely amazing ; and 
so I always seek first, and return again and again to, three 
pictures of a quietness equal to the quietude of any land- 
scape I know, in which perhaps the quietude is the more 
noticeable by the absence of any external aid. It is the 
essential quietude of the country. I refer to the " Chi- 
chester Canal," No. 560, which is reproduced on the page 
opposite 126, to "Petworth Park," No. 559, painted in 
the same year, and to No. 492 on the opposite wall, "A 
Frosty Morning : Sunrise," which conveys a sense of still 
cold more completely than any picture I know, however 
they may be loaded with corroborative snowflakes or 



118 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

figures blowing on their nails. These are my favourites 
— these and such fairy scenes as " The Fighting Teme- 
raire," and "Agrippina landing with the ashes of Ger- 
manicus" (one wonders why Turner troubled to find a 
subject at all) ; and such gorgeous southern daydreams as 
the two pictures of Venice, Nos. 534 and 535 ; and " Cali- 
gula's Palace " in all its lovely unreality ; and the " Bay of 
Baiae " and " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage " ; and " Crossing 
the Brook," where he seems, after his competitive wont, to 
have set himself the task of going beyond everyone in 
Rooms XX and XXI and, in sheer might at any rate, to 
have succeeded. These I admire most — these and the two 
great works which Turner ordered to be hung beside the 
Claudes in Room XVI, of which to my mind the "Dido 
Building Carthage" runs Claude very close indeed, while 
the other, "The Sun Rising in a Mist," enters a region 
of which Claude knew nothing. Having seen these, there 
is still before one the exquisite delight of the Turner water 
colours in the basement. 

And here my rapid and perhaps far too personal and 
opinionated survey of the National Gallery ends. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE STRAND AND COVENT GARDEN 

The Strand — A Cosmopolitan Street — Waterloo Bridge and white stone 
— The Adelphi — The Brothers Adam — Adelphi Terrace and 
Buckingham Street — Samuel Pepys, a great Londoner — The old 
Palaces — The Covent Garden stalwarts — A modern bruiser — 
New thoroughfares — Will's Coffee House — Charles and Mary 
Lamb — The Lyceum — Benedick and Beatrice — Dr. Primrose 
and Olivia — Sotheby's — Interesting and not interesting — Essex 
Street — Simpson's of the Past — Chop Houses — London's love 
of affront — Modes of Slavery — The picturesque omnibus — A 
Piccadilly scene — St. Mary's Le Strand — The Maypole — The 
Swinge-bucklers — St. Clement Danes — The Law Courts 

I COULD not, I think, explain why, but I have more 
distaste for the Strand than for any street in London. 
I would avoid it as carefully, from pure unreasoning pre- 
judice, as Count D'Orsay or Dick Swiveller avoided certain 
other districts on financial grounds. This, I fear, proves 
me to be only half a Londoner — if that ; for the Strand to 
many people is London, all else being extraneous. They 
endure their daily tasks elsewhere only because such endur- 
ance provides them with the means to be in the Strand at 
night. 

The most Bohemian of London streets, if the Strand 
could cross to Paris it would instantly burgeon into a 
boulevard. Its prevaihng type is of the stage: the blue 
chin of Thespis is very apparent there, and the ample 

119 



120 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

waistcoat of the manager is prominent too. Except at 
night, on the way to the Gaiety, the fashionable youth 
avoid the Strand; and indeed the best-dressed men and 
women are not seen on its pavements, howsoever they may 
use its carriage way. But with these exceptions, all London 
may be studied there ; and other nations too, for the great 
hotels and Charing Cross station tend to cosmopolitanise it. 
Probably at no hour of the day or night are more than half 
the Strand's population true Londoners. 

If the Strand is too much for one, as it may easily be, 
the escape is very simple. You may be on the banks of the 
Thames in two minutes from any part of it, or on the 
beautiful Adelphi Terrace, or among the flowers and 
greenery of Covent Garden, or amid the peace of the Savoy 
chapel or the quietude of Essex Street. Standing on the 
south end of Waterloo Bridge on a sunny afternoon you get 
one of the best views of London that is to be had and learn 
something of the possibilities of the city's white stone. 
Somerset House from this point is superb, St. Paul's as 
beautiful and fragile as any of Guardi's Venetian domes. 
Above the green of the trees and the Temple lawns and 
the dull red of the new Embankment buildings, broken 
here and there by a stone block, you see Wren's spires 
pricking the sky, St. Bride's always the most noticeable; 
and now, far back, gleaming with its new whiteness and 
the gold of its figure of Justice, is the new Central Crimi- 
nal Court, to add an extra touch of light. Culminating 
statues gilded or otherwise are beginning to be quite a 
feature of London buildings. The New Gaiety Theatre has 
one ; Telephone House in Temple Avenue has a graceful 
Mercury ; over the Savoy portico stands a noble Crusader. 
Less ambitious but not less pleasing is the gold galleon 
forming a weather-vane on Mr. Astor's Embankment office. 



THE ADELPHI 121 

which is as fine in its way as the Flying Dragon on Bow 
Church in Cheapside. 

The Adelphi, which dates from 1768, consists of the 
Terrace, standing high overlooking the river, and its neigh- 
bouring streets, John Street, Robert Street, James Street, 
William Street, and Adam Street, together with the arches 
beneath. It was the work of the Scotch architects Robert, 
John, James and William Adam, who in its generic title 
and in these four streets celebrate for ever their relationship 
and their names. The Terrace must be seen from the Em- 
bankment or the river if its proportions are to be rightly 
esteemed; and one must go within one of the houses to 
appreciate the beauty of the Adam ceilings and fireplaces, 
which are the perfect setting for the furniture of Heppel- 
white and Sheraton. English taste in decoration and de- 
sign has certainly never since reached the height of delicacy 
and restraint it then knew. 

No house in the Terrace has been replaced or very seri- 
ously tampered with, and all have some interesting associa- 
tion, chief among them being No. 4, where in 1779 the 
gaiety of the nation was eclipsed by the death of Garrick. 
The other Adelphi streets have historic memories too. 
Disraeli always believed that he was born at No. 2 James 
Street, in a library, although the facts seem to be against 
him; at No. 18 John Street is the Society of Arts, whence 
come London's tablets of great men, of which I have 
already said something ; and at No. 2 Robert Street lived 
Thomas Hood, who sang the "Song of the Shirt." 

More ancient is the district between the Adelphi and 
the Charing Cross District Railway station. Here we go 
back a hundred years before the Adelphi was built, to 
associations with the great name of Buckingham — Buck- 
ingham Street, Duke Street, and Villiers Street being its 



122 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

chief quarters. Of these Buckingham Street retains most 
signs of age. Samuel Pepys lived there for many years, in 
the south-west corner house overlooking the river, which he 
probably came to think his own ; Peter the Great lodged 
at the opposite corner ; Jean Jacques Rousseau and David 
Hume were together in Buckingham Street in 1765, before 
they entered upon their great and unphilosophic quarrel; 
Etty painted at No. 14 and Clarkson Stanfield's studio was 
below him. 

Pepys' companion diarist John Evelyn resided for a while 
in Villiers Street, which is now given up to cheap eating- 
houses and meretricious shops, and on Sunday evenings is 
packed with rough boys and girls. Steele lived here after 
the death of his wife. The street is much changed since 
then, for Charing Cross station robbed it of its western 
side. 

I am inclined to think that Pepys when all is said is the 
greatest of the Londoners — a fuller, more intensely alive 
Londoner than either Johnson or Lamb. Perhaps he wins 
his pre-eminence rather by his littleness, for to be a 
Londoner in the highest one must be rather trivial or at 
least be interested in trivialities. Johnson was too serious. 
Lamb too imaginative, to compete with this busy Secretary. 
Neither was such an epicure of life, neither found the world 
fresh every morning as he did. It is as the epicure of life 
that he is so alluring. His self-revelations are valuable in 
some degree, and his picture of the times makes him per- 
haps the finest understudy a historian ever had ; but Pepys' 
greatness lies in his appreciation of good things. He lived 
minute by minute, as wise men do, and he extracted what- 
ever honey was possible. Who else has so fused business 
and pleasure ? Who else has kept his mind so open, so 
alert ? Whenever Pepys found an odd quarter of an hour 



THE OLD STRAND PALACES 123 

he sang or strummed it away with a glad heart ; whenever 
he walked abroad his eyes were vihgant for pretty women. 
No man was more amusable. He drank "incomparable 
good claret" as it should be drunk, and loved it; he 
laughed at Betterton, he ogled Nelly Gwynn, he in- 
trigued with men of affairs, he fondled his books, he ate 
his dinner, all with gusto and his utmost energy. Trivial 
he certainly was, but his enjoyment is his justification. 
Samuel Pepys was a superb artist in living. He was a 
man of insatiable inquisitiveness : there was always some- 
thing he considered " pretty to see " ; and it was this gift of 
curiosity that made him the best of Londoners. He had 
also the true Londoner's faculty of bearing with equanimity 
the trials of others, for all through the great plague and 
the great fire he played his lute with cheerfulness. 

Turning into the pleasant Embankment Gardens at the 
foot, one comes at once upon the York Water Gate, which 
was built by the Duke of Buckingham on the shore of the 
river to admit boats to his private staithe, those being the 
days when the Thames was a highway of fashion. To-day 
it is given up to commerce. But he did not complete his 
design of rebuilding the old Palace; the gate is all that 
now remains; and the site of York House is covered by 
Buckingham Street and its companions — just as the site of 
Durham House, where Raleigh lived, is beneath the Adel- 
phi, and that of Arundel House beneath Arundel Street and 
its neighbourhood, and that of old Somerset House beneath 
the present building of the same name. 

Only two relics of the old Strand palaces remain: the 
York Water Gate and the Savoy chapel, one of London's 
perfect buildings, dating from 1505 and offering in its 
quietude the completest contrast to the bustle of the 
surrounding neighbourhood. The outside walls alone 



124 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

represent the original structure, and they, I fancy, only 
in parts. Among those who lie beneath its stones are 
Mrs. Anne Killigrew, whom Dryden mourned, and George 
Wither the poet, who sang divinely in prison of the con- 
solations of the muse. 

Covent Garden being for the most part a wholesale 
market, it has none of the interest of the Paris Halles, where 
the old women preside over stalls of fruit and vegetables 
arranged with exquisite neatness, and make up penny- 
worths and two pennyworths with so thoughtful an eye to 
the preservation of economy. We have nothing like that in 
London. In London if you want two pennyworth of 
mixed salad you must buy six pennyworth and throw 
away the balance, economy being one of the virtues of 
which we are ashamed; nor dp we encourage open air 
stalls except for the poor. Hence where it is retail Covent 
Garden deals only in cut flowers and rare fruits, al- 
though I must not forget the attractive little aviary on 
the roof at the east end of the central building, where 
the prettiest of the little cage birds of all countries twitter 
their appeal to you to take them home and love them. 

There is something in the constitution of the London 
porter, whether he unloads ships or wagons, carries on his 
head vegetables, fish, or the products of farthest Ind, 
which arrests progress, keeps him apart and out of the 
movement. You notice this at the Docks, which are of 
course remote from the centre, but you notice it also at 
Covent Garden, within sound of the very modern Strand. 
Covent Garden remains independent and aloof. New 
buildings may arise, petrol instead of horses may drag in 
the wagons from the country, but the work of unloading 
and distributing vegetables and flowers remains the same, 
and the porters have an immemorial air and attitude 



THE BRUISED BRUISER 125 

unresponsive to the times; while the old women who sit 
in rows in the summer shelling peas have sat thus since 
peas first had pods. Not only does the Covent Garden 
porter lead his own life insensitive to change, but his 
looks are ancient too : his face belongs to the past. It is 
not the ordinary quick London face: it has its scornful 
expression, of course, because London stamps a weary 
contempt on all her outdoor sons; but it is heavier, for 
example, than the Drury Lane face, close by. Perhaps the 
soil is responsible for this : perhaps Covent Garden depend- 
ing wholly on the soil, and these men on Covent Garden, 
they have gained something of the rural stohdity and 
patience. 

One could not have a better view of the Covent Garden 
porters collectively than fell to my lot one day recently, 
when I found some scores of them waiting outside the 
boxing club which used to be Evans's Rooms in Thackeray's 
day, and before that was Lord's Hotel, looking expectantly 
at its doors. I waited too, and presently there emerged 
alone a fumbling stumbling figure, a youth of twenty-four 
or so, neatly dressed and brushed, but with his cheeks and 
eyes a mass of pink puff. The daylight smote him almost 
as painfully as his late adversary must have done, and he 
stood there a moment on the steps wondering where he 
was, while Covent Garden, which dearly loves a fight 
with or without the gloves, murmured recognition and 
approval. No march of progress, no utilitarian wave, 
here. Byron's pugilist friend and master, Jackson of 
Bond Street, could he have walked in, would have detected 
Uttle change, either in the crowd or the hero, since his own 
day. 

Perhaps the most important event connected with St. 
Paul's Church, in Covent Garden, which in its original 



126 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

form was built by Inigo Jones to be " the handsomest barn 
in England," was the marriage in 1773 of William Turner 
of Maiden Lane to Mary Marshall of the same parish ; for 
from that union sprang Joseph Mallord William Turner, 
the painter, who was baptised there in 1775. Among 
those buried here are Samuel Butler the author of Hudihras, 
and Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) the scarifier of Guelphs 
and Whitbreads, who wished his coffin to touch that of his 
great and satirical predecessor; William Wycherley, who 
wrote The Country Girl; Sir Peter Lely, who painted 
Stuart beauties ; Grinling Gibbons, who carved wood like 
an angel; Dr. Arne, the musician; Thomas Girtin, the 
water-colourist, who died of his excesses at twenty-seven, 
but not before he had proved himself a master ; and Charles 
Macklin, the actor, who lived to be 107. 

It was in Maiden Lane, close by, that Turner was born, 
in 1775, and among famous sojourners there were Andrew 
Marvell and Voltaire. To-day it is given up to the stage, 
and it is difiicult to pass through it without hearing the 
chorus of some forthcoming musical piece at practice in an 
upper room. Rule's oyster shop is here, the modern sub- 
stitute for the historic Cyder Cellar, where a hundred years 
ago Porson drank incredible draughts and grew wittier 
with every potation. And it was in Maiden Lane that 
poor Terriss, the last of the swaggering romantics of the 
English stage, was murdered by a madman a few years ago. 

Between Covent Garden and Drury Lane certain eigh- 
teenth century traces still remain; but east of Drury 
Lane is a wilderness of modernity. Everything has gone 
between that street and Lincoln's Inn Fields — everything. 
Men are not made London County Councillors for nothing. 

At the time I write the houses in Kingsway and Aid- 
wych have still to be built, a few isolated theatres and 



NEW STREETS 127 

offices being all that is yet finished. It remains to be seen 
whether London, so conservative in its routes, so senti- 
mentally attached to its old rights of way, will make any 
use of a wide road from the Strand to Holborn, but will 
not rather adhere to Bow Street and Endell Street or 
Chancery Lane. It has a way of doing so. Nothing has 
ever yet persuaded it to walk or drive up or down Shaftes- 
bury Avenue, which for all the use it has been might never 
have ploughed through the Soho rookeries ; while there are 
many people who would rather be splashed in St. Martin's 
Lane and among the bird fanciers of St. Andrew's two 
streets, than use the new and spacious Charing Cross Road. 
There is yet another reason why one looks with doubt on 
the usefulness of this new road, and that is that the great 
currents of London locomotion have set always east and 
west. 

Of Covent Garden's two great theatres I have nothing to 
say ; but the north-east corner house of Russell Street and 
Bow Street, with its red tiles and ancient fagade, has much 
interest, for it was once, in a previous state. Will's Coffee 
House, where John Dryden sat night after night and de- 
livered judgments on new books and plays. The associa- 
tions of Will's are too numerous for me to dare to touch 
upon them further: they are a book alone. Next door, 
at No. 20 Russell Street, a hundred and more years later, 
over what is now a fruiterer's, lodged Charles and Mary 
Lamb ; but the Society of Arts does not recognise the fact, 
nor even that Lamb was born at 2 Crown Office Row in 
the Temple, to which we are steadily drawing near. 
Lamb's rooms I fancy extended to the corner house too, and 
it was from one of these that, directly they were established 
there in 1817, Mary Lamb had the felicity to see a thief 
being conveyed to Bow Street police station. 



128 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Bow Street has now completely lost its antiquity and is 
no longer interesting. Nor would Wellington Street be 
interesting were it not for its association with Henry 
Irving and the Lyceum. It is true that Henry Irving is 
no more, and the Lyceum is transformed and vulgarised ; 
but the memory of that actor is too vivid for it to be 
possible yet to pass through this street without a regret. 
The Lyceum, so long the stronghold of all that was most 
harmonious and romantic and dignified in the English 
drama, is now a music-hall with two performances a night, 
and never again will that great and courteous gentleman 
with whom its old fame is identified be seen on its stage. It 
was in a corner of the pit, leaning against the barrier be- 
tween that part of the house and the stalls, that I saw all 
Irving's best performances in recent years, most exquisite 
of which to recall being always his Benedick in Much Ado 
About Nothing — or, as the programme hawkers who hov- 
ered about the queue in the dark passage of the Lyceum 
Tavern used to call it, "Much to-do about Nothing." 
Of all the myriad plays I have seen — good plays, mid- 
dling plays, and plays in which one's wandering eyes return 
again and again most longingly to the magic word " exit " 
— I remember no incident with more serene pleasure 
than the entry of Miss Terry as Beatrice with the words 
"Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner," 
and the humorous gravity, a little perplexed by the skill 
of this new and alluring antagonist, of Benedick's face 
as he pondered his counter stroke and found none. And 
with it comes the recollection of that other scene between 
these two rare and gentle spirits, when, in "Olivia," 
Dr. Primrose, having at last found his weeping daughter, 
would take her home again. All reluctance and shame, 
she demurs and shrinks until he comes beautifully down to 



SOTHEBY'S 129 

level ground with her, by saying, with that indescribably 
sweet smile of his, " You ran away with one man : won't 
you run back with me ? " and wins the day. Irving may 
have lacked many qualities of the great actor ; but when he 
died there passed away from the English stage something 
of charm and distinction and picturesque power that it is 
not likely in our time to recover; and the world was the 
poorer by the loss of a commanding gentleman. 

It is in the lower part of Wellington Street, between the 
Strand and Waterloo Bridge, that Sotheby's is situated — 
that famous sale-room where book-collectors and dealers 
meet to bid against each other for first editions, and where, 
in these unpatriotic times, the most valuable of our auto- 
graph letters and unique literary treasures are allowed to 
fall to American dollars. 

York Street, which was built early in the seventeenth 
century, retains much of its old character. It was at No. 4 
that De Quincey wrote his Concessions ; and the superb 
Elliston, who counted fish at dinner " as nothing," lived at 
No. 5. I am exploring and naming only the old streets 
where the actual historic houses still stand, because to walk 
down a dull street because a great man lived in it before the 
rebuilder and modern taste had made it dull, is not an 
attractive occupation. And I am omitting all names but 
those that seem to me to lend a human note to these 
pages. Streets such as Arundel Street and Norfolk Street 
in the Strand, which had many literary and other associa- 
tions, but have been entirely rebuilt and are now merely 
business thoroughfares lined with fantastic red brick 
fagades, do not seem to me interesting. But Essex Street, 
close by, does seem to me interesting, because it retains its 
old Georgian form, and being a cul-de-sac for carriages, is 
quiet to boot. The Essex Head, it is true, where Sam's 



130 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Club met under Doctor Johnson's sway, has been rebuilt ; 
but the lower part of the street is much as it was when 
Henry Erskine learnt oratory at the Robin Hood Club (as 
some of the speakers of our day learn it at the Cogers') and 
when the Young Pretender lodged at Lady Primrose's. 

When I first came to London, Simpson's, the most fa- 
mous of the Strand eating-houses, was beyond my purse. 
Not for two years did I venture between its doors, and then 
was so overawed that I might as well have fasted. I re- 
member that the head waiter, in addition to the charge 
for attendance, which was, I think, threepence, although, 
such was my obvious unimportance, there had been none, 
automatically subtracted a sixpence as my tip to him, thus 
saving me the embarrassment of wondering if that were 
enough. It was the first thoughtful thing that had occurred 
during the meal. But later, when I had learned to call 
"Waiter " without a spasm of self-consciousness, I extracted 
much entertainment from Simpson's, not only in the 
restaurant, but upstairs in the Divan, where one might 
watch champions of chess mating in two moves, or read the 
current number of Cornhill. 

But all that is changed. There is no Divan to-day, and 
no one there has ever heard of the Cornhill, and in place of 
the old shabbiness and comfort we have sumptuously up- 
holstered rooms and all the paraphernalia of modernity. 
The chop-house has become a restaurant. The joints are 
still wheeled from table to table, but not with the old leisure, 
although still not so eagerly that the drivers' licences are 
in any danger of endorsement. Simpson's in its new shape 
is indeed symptomatic of the times. It even advertises. 

The old Chop House is almost extinct, although I know 
still of one or two the addresses of which nothing shall in- 
duce me to divulge (lest a syndicate corrupt them), where 



A LOVER OF AFFRONTS 131 

one still sits in bays, and eats good English food with 
English names, and waits a long time for it, and does not 
complain ; where there is no cloakroom for hats and coats, 
and no door porters whose one aim in life is to send you 
away in a cab ; where a twopenny tip goes farther than a 
shilling elsewhere; and where if one lights a pipe no 
German-Swiss manager suddenly appears, all suavity and 
steel, to say that pipes are not allowed. There are still two 
or three of such places, but probably by the time this book 
is published they will have gone too and no pipes be left. 
Londoners, who sing " Rule Britannia " at every smoking 
concert, turn to water before any foreign mat're d'hotel. 

Although never perhaps so much a slave as when he is 
in a foreign restaurant, the Londoner loves always to wear 
shackles. No one accepts slights and insults so much as a 
matter of course. He may grumble a little, but he never 
really protests; and the next day he has forgotten. The 
Londoner has no memory. I say it again and again : he 
has no memory, and no public spirit or real resentment. 

He supports national collections of pictures and books, 
but is quite happy when he goes to see them on Sunday 
afternoons, his only opportunity, and finds the door locked 
in his face. 

In the course of a week he wastes hours on 'buses in 
the cold, during blocks caused by a handful of Italians 
(London's official road menders) repairing a hole made by 
an Electric Light or Gas Company; and though at the 
time he remarks that it is scandalous, he forgets all about 
it the instant the block is past. 

He pays twice for having his hair cut or his chin shaved, 
once to the proprietor of the saloon and once to the oper- 
ator (sometimes to add to the grotesqueness of the proceed- 
ing the proprietor and the operator being one). He allows 



132 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

theatrical managers to charge him sixpence for a pro- 
gramme without which he cannot understand the play 
which he has already paid to see. 

He does nothing towards reform when at one minute 
past eleven on Sunday, and twenty-nine minutes to one on 
ordinary nights, he is unable by law to buy anything to 
drink. 

He pays his money day after day for a seat in a train, 
and cheerfully stands for the whole journey home, hanging 
perilously to a strap or hat rack, packed closer than the 
Humane Society (to which perhaps he contributes) would 
allow anyone to pack creatures who lack immortal souls. 

Now and then a letter finds its way into the papers 
pointing out this and other hardships; but that is all. 
The railway companies and restaurateurs, the theatrical 
managers and writers, know Londoners too well to do 
more than smile in their sleeves and prepare new forms 
of aggression. London would be wretched were it not 
affronted. 

In no street out of the city are omnibuses so constant as 
in the Strand, although to see the London 'bus at its best 
I think Whitehall is the place. As they come down the 
hill from Charing Cross into the spaciousness of the road 
opposite the Horse Guards, at a sharp trot, like ships in 
full sail, swaying a little under their speed, and shining 
gaily in all their hues, they are full of the joy of life and 
transmit some of it to the spectator. What London would 
be without its coloured omnibuses one dares not think. 
After the first flush of Spring, almost all her gaiety comes 
from them. Whitehall is the best at all times, but in 
April and May, when the trees (always a fortnight earlier 
than in the country) are vivid on the edge of the Green 
Park, and the sun has a nearly level ray, there is nothing 



THE SUNNY STRAND 133 

to equal the smiling loveliness of Piccadilly filled with 
omnibuses, as seen from the top of the hill, looking east, 
about Down Street. It is an indescribable scene of stream- 
ing colour and gentle vivacity. Words are useless : it needs 
Monet or Pisarro. 

Mention of the slanting sun brings me back to the 
Strand ; for there is nothing more beautiful in its way — 
certainly a way peculiar to London — than that crowded 
'bus-filled street at the same afternoon hour, with the light 
on the white spire of St. Mary's at the east end, which 
now, in its isolation, more than ever seems to block the 
way. It is a graver, less Continental beauty than Picca- 
dilly's: but it is equally indelible. Almost it makes me 
forgive the Strand. 

St. Mary's church, like St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, is not, 
as most people would tell you, one of Wren's, but was 
built by Gibbs. Everything possible was done, some few 
years ago, to get permission to demolish it, for what were 
called the " Strand improvements " ; but happily in vain. 
All honour to the resisters. The famous Maypole in the 
Strand stood on the site of this church. A cedar trunk, 
one hundred and thirty-four feet high, it was erected in 
1661 in honour either of the Restoration or (and here 
comes in the sweet of ignorance) because a Strand farrier's 
daughter, the wife of General Monk, had become the 
Duchess of Albemarle. 

St. Clement's Inn, close by St. Mary's Le Strand, a few 
years ago was still a backwater of peace, but is now ob- 
literated and new houses bear its name — Clement's Inn, 
where young Master Shallow of Warwickshire, Little John 
Doit of Staffordshire, Black George Barnes of Staffordshire, 
and Francis Pickbone and Will Squele, a Cotswold man, 
were the devil's own swinge-bucklers. How could we pull 



134 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

it down ? But we would pull down anything. And New 
Inn, close by, of which Sir Thomas More was a member — 
that has gone too. Men, as I remarked before, are not 
made County Councillors for nothing. 

With St. Clement Danes church, just to the east of St. 
Mary's Le Strand, and, hke that, most gloriously in the 
very middle of the road, we come at last to the true Wren. 
It was in this church, one of London's whitest where it is 
white — of a whiteness, under certain conditions of light, 
surpassing alabaster — that Dr. Johnson had his pew, from 
which, we are told, he made his responses with tremulous 
earnestness. The pew was in the north gallery, where a 
tablet marks the spot, styling him (and who shall demur .'') 
"the philosopher, the poet, the great lexicographer, the 
profound moralist and chief writer of his time." Among 
those buried here are Thomas Otway and Nathaniel Lee, 
the dramatists ; Joe Miller, who made all the jokes, and in 
addition to being a "facetious companion," as his epitaph 
says, was a "tender husband" and "sincere friend," as 
humorists should be; Dr. Kitchener, the author of The 
Cook's Oracle and himself a " notable fork " ; and Acker- 
mann, the publisher of the Repository, which everyone 
who loves the London of the Regency, its buildings and 
costumes, in the fairest of all the methods of counterfeiting 
a city's life, namely copper-plate and aquatint, should know, 
and if possible possess. 

And here at the Griffin, opposite the most fantastically 
and romantically conceived Law Courts in the world — the 
most astounding assemblage of spires, and turrets, and 
gables, and cloisters, that ever sprang from one English- 
man's brain, — we leave the Strand and pass into Fleet 
Street, or, in other words, into the City of London. 








ST MARY-LE-STRAND 



CHAPTER X 

FLEET STREET AND THE LAW 

Temple Bar — Charles Lamb — The Retired Cit — The Grifl&n — 
Printer's Ink — An All-night Walk in London — The Temple — 
Oliver Goldsmith — Lamb Again — Lincoln's Inn — Ben Jonson — 
Lincoln's Inn Fields — Old Mansions — Great First Nights — The 
Soane Museum — The Dissuasions of Eld — Dr. Johnson — The 
Cheshire Cheese — St. Dunstan's and St. Bride's 

WHEN I first knew London — passing through it on 
the way to a northern terminus and thence to school 
— Temple Bar was still standing. But in 1878 it was 
pulled down, and with its disappearance old London's 
doom may be said to have sounded. Since that day the 
demolishers have taken so much courage into their hands 
that now what is old has to be sought out : whereas Temple 
Bar thrust antiquity and all that was leisurely and obsolete 
right into one's notice with unavoidable emphasis. The 
day on which it was decreed that Fleet Street's traffic must 
be no longer embarrassed by that beautiful sombre gate- 
way, on that day Dr. Johnson's London gave up the ghost 
and a new utilitarian London came into being. 

By the way, it is worth while to give an afternoon to a 
walk from Enfield to Waltham Cross, through Theobald's 
park, in order to stand before Temple Bar in its new 
setting. Enfield is in itself interesting enough, if only for 
its associations with one who loved London with a love 

135 



136 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

that was almost a passion, and who never tired of running 
over her charms and looking with wistful eyes from his 
rural exile across the fields towards the veil of smoke be- 
neath which she spread her allurements : I mean, of course, 
Charles Lamb. It was an odd chance, which no one could 
have foreseen, least of all perhaps himself, to whom it must 
have stood for all that was most solid and permanent and 
essentially urban, that carried Temple Bar (beneath whose 
shadow he was born) to this new home among green fields, 
very near his own. 

The Bar stands now as one of the gateways to Theo- 
bald's park. It was bought prior to demolition by Sir 
Henry Meux, and every brick and stone was numbered, so 
that the work of setting it up again in 1888 exactly as of 
old was quite simple. I know of no act of civic piety 
prettier than this. And there Temple Bar stands, and 
will stand, beneath great trees, a type of the prosperous cit 
who after a life of hard work amid the hum of the streets 
retires to a little place not too far from town and spends 
the balance of his days in Diocletian repose. What sights 
and pageants Temple Bar must recall and ruminate upon 
in its green solitude ! The transplantation of the Elgin 
Marbles from the Parthenon to the British Museum — 
from dominating the Acropolis and Athens to serving as a 
source of perplexity to British sightseers in an overheated 
gallery of Bloomsbury — is hardly more violent than the 
transplantation of Temple Bar from Fleet Street and the 
city's feet to Hertfordshire and solitude. 

A concrete example of English taste in the eighteen- 
seventies is offered by the study of the Griffin — the me- 
morial which was selected to mark the site of W^ren's gate- 
way. It is curious to remember that the heads of traitors 
were displayed publicly on the spikes of Temple Bar 



PRINTER'S INK 137 

as recently as 1772. Barbarism is always surprising us 
by its proximity. 

Even less than the Strand's pavements are those of Fleet 
Street fitted for loiterers. In fact we are now in the City, 
and urgent haste has begun : not quite as in Cheapside and 
Broad Street, for no one here goes without a hat, but 
bustle is now in the air, and with every step eastward we 
shall be more in the fray. From Fleet Street, however, 
though it may in itself seethe with activity, the escape is 
easy into quietude more perfect than any that the Strand 
has offered ; for here is the Temple on the south, and on 
the north Lincoln's Inn with its gardens; here also are 
Clifford's Inn (now, in 1906, doomed to the speculator) and 
Serjeants', Inn ; and here are the oddest alleys, not nar- 
rower than those between the Strand and Maiden Lane, 
but more tortuous and surprising, the air of all of them (if 
you can call it air) heavy with the thick oiliness of printer's 
ink. 

Printer's ink is indeed the life blood of Fleet Street and 
its environs. The chief newspaper offices of London are 
all around us. The Times', it is true, is a little to the 
south-east, on the other side of Ludgate Hill station ; but 
in Fleet Street, and between it and Holborn on the north 
and the river on the south, are nearly all the others. Here 
all day are men writing, and all night men printing it. If 
a tidal wave were to roll up the Thames and submerge 
London, the newspapers would go first : a thought for each 
of us to take as he will, with or without tears. 

On an all-night walk in London, which is an enterprise 
quite worth adventuring upon, it is well to be in Fleet 
Street between three and five, when it springs into intense 
activity as the carts are being loaded with the papers for 
the early morning trains. From here one would go to 



138 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Covent Garden and smell the jQowers — the best antidote 
to printer's ink that has been discovered. 

The Temple, which spreads her cool courts and gardens 
all unsuspected within a few yards of Fleet Street, is best 
gained by the gateway opposite Chancery Lane, by the old 
house with a ceiling of Tudor roses that one used to 
contemplate as one was being shaved (all barbers' saloons 
should have good ceilings). It is now a County Council 
preserve. Almost immediately we come to the Temple 
church, the most beautiful small church in London and 
one of the most beautiful in the world — so grave in char- 
acter and austere and decisive in all its lines; and yet so 
human too and interesting, with its marble Templars l3dng 
there on their circular pavement in a repose that has al- 
ready endured for five centuries and should last for cen- 
turies more. Many of Lamb's old Benchers are buried 
beneath this church; and here also lie the learned John 
Selden, and James Howell who wrote the Epistolce. 

To the north of the church is a plain slab recording that 
Oliver Goldsmith, that eminent Londoner and child of 
genius, lies beneath it. He died at No. 2 Brick Court, up 
two pairs of stairs, in a " closet without any light in it," as 
Thackeray, who later had rooms below, described the poet's 
bedroom. That was on April 4, 1774, and the next 
morning, when the news went out, it was to this door that 
there came all kinds of unfortunate creatures to whom he 
had been kind — weeping and friendless now. 

To name all the illustrious men who have had chambers 
in the Temple would not only be an undertaking of great 
magnitude but would smell overmuch of the Law. Rather 
would I lay stress on the more human names, such as poor 
Goldsmith's and Charles Lamb's. It was a little less than 
a year after Goldsmith had died at 2 Brick Court that at 




IN THE TEMPLE GARDENS (FOUNTAIN COURT) 



THE CONSERVING LAW 139 

the same number in Crown Office Row Charles Lamb was 
born — on February 10, 1775. The Row is still there, 
but it has been rebuilt since Lamb's day, or perhaps only 
refaced. The gateway opposite leading into the garden 
is the same, as its date testifies. Lamb claimed to be a 
Londoner of the Londoners ; but few Londoners have the 
opportunity of spending their childhood amid so much 
air and within sight of so much greenery as he. Perhaps 
to these early associations we naay attribute some of the 
joy with which in after life, Londoner as he was (having 
lent his heart in usury to the City's stones and scenes) , he 
would set out on an expedition among green fields. 

I ventured just now to mock a little at the Law; and 
yet it is not fair to do so, for it is the Law that has pre- 
served for London this beautiful Temple where all is peace 
and eighteenth-century gravity. Yet not everything has 
it retained, since no longer are the Lins of Court revels 
held here. It was in the Middle Temple Hall, which is 
a perfect example of Elizabethan architecture, that Twelfth 
Night was first played ; and in this Hall is still preserved 
the table, made of wood from the Armada, on which 
Elizabeth signed Mary Queen of Scots' death warrant. 

Lincoln's Inn, the Law's domain on the other side of 
Fleet Street, has its lawns and seclusion and old world 
quiet too; but it does not compare with the Temple. 
The Temple's little enclosed courts, with plane trees in 
their midst, of the tenderest green imaginable in early 
spring; her sun-dials and her emblems; her large green 
spaces sloping to the river; her church and her Master's 
house; her gateways and alleys and the long serene line 
of King's Bench Walk — these are possessions which 
Lincoln's Inn can but envy. And yet New Square is one 
of the most satisfying of London's many grave parallelo- 



140 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

grams ; and the chapel which Inigo Jones built rises nobly 
from the ground ; and the old gateway in Chancery Lane 
does something to compensate for the loss of Temple Bar. 
Its date 1518 disposes of the story that Ben Jonson helped 
to build it, with a trowel in one hand and a book in the 
other, but I like to believe that he did a little desultory 
bricklaying in this way on some extension to it. 

Chancery Lane has recently been ennobled by the new 
Record Office and made attractive by a little row of the 
lions which Alfred Stevens designed for the British Museum 
railings but which the British Museum authorities tired 
of and repudiated. Someone had the happy thought 
to set up a few of these delightful creatures (which may 
be bought in plaster of Paris for a few shillings of 
Brucciani) on the railings of the west side of the road 
opposite the Record Office. 

To Lincoln's Inn Fields, which is now lawyers' offices 
and a public playing ground, but was once a Berkeley 
Square, we come by way of the Inn. On the north and 
south sides the rebuilders have already set their mark ; but 
the west side, although the wave of reform that flung up 
Kings way and Aldwych washes its very roots, is still 
standing, much as it was in the great days of the seven- 
teenth century, except that what were then mansions of 
the great are now rookeries of the Law. No. 59 and 60, 
for example, with its two magnificent brick pillars, was 
built by Inigo Jones for the Earl of Lindsay. Inside are 
a few traces of its original splendours. The corner house, 
now No. 67, with the cloisters, was Newcastle House (pre- 
viously Powis House) the residence of the great Duke of 
Newcastle. Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where Pepys 
used to be so vastly amused (going there so often as to 
make Mrs. Pepys "as mad as the devil") was on a site 



THE SOANE HOTCH-POTCH 141 

now covered by the Museum of the Royal College of 
Surgeons, to which the curious are admitted by order. 
Not for me are physiological whims and treasures of 
anatomy preserved in spirits of wine ; rather would I stay 
outside and reflect on the first night of Congreve's Love 
for Love on April 30, 1695, with Mrs. Bracegirdle as 
Angelica, or of the premiere of The Beggar's Opera, thirty 
and more years later, with Lavinia Fenton so bewitching 
as Polly Peacham that she carried by storm the heart of 
the Duke of Bolton and became his Duchess. A little 
while ago I was reflecting that barbarism, although now, 
of course, extinct, is yet very recent; but to dip however 
casually into the history of London is to be continually 
reminded that for the most part nothing changes. Even 
as I write the papers are full of the marriages of two 
noblemen to actresses. 

On the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields is the Soane 
Museum, a curious medley of odds and ends with a few 
priceless things among them and a very capricious system 
of throwing open its doors. Indeed I know of no museum 
where the presence of visitors seems to be so resented : for 
after overcoming initial difficulties of getting in — the 
treasures being on view for only five months in the year, 
and only on certain days of each week, and no one of un- 
cleanly dress being admitted: after ringing the bell and 
wiping one's boots, according to order: after giving up 
one's stick, writing one's name in a book, and deciding 
whether or not the place is sacred and how to deal with 
one's hat: after all this, the successful besieger becomes 
aware of three further dampening influences, (1) a want of 
light, (2) an absence of descriptive labels on the million 
and one fragments and knickknacks that make up this olla 
podrida, and (3) the presence in every room of a venerable 



142 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

custodian whose slumbers one is conscious of cruelly in- 
terrupting by being so extraordinarily and unpardonably 
inconsiderate as to be there at all. 

Under such an accumulation of embarrassments the ex- 
amination of Sir John Soane's hotch-potch is neither an 
easy nor a very genial experience, and I am almost disposed 
to say that one may remain outside in Lincoln's Inn Fields 
without great loss. And yet that is not so : for if one did 
not lay siege to this fortress one would never see Hogarth's 
delicately coloured election series or " The Rake's Progress" 
in the original, and since in two or three of the subsidiary 
figures of "The Humours of an Election Entertainment" 
he comes nearer Jan Steen than in any of his work this 
would be a pity ; and one would never see Canaletto's fine 
painting of the Grand Canal — better than any of that 
master's work at the Wallace Collection, I think; nor 
Giulio Clovio's illuminations to St. Paul's Epistles ; nor a 
very interesting Watteau; nor several quaint missals, 
among them one whence the Bastard of Bourbon got his 
religion; nor a MS. of Lamb's Margaret of Newcastle; 
nor the MS. of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liherata; nor two of 
Reynolds' sketch books ; nor many exquisite cameos and 
intaglios ; nor Christopher Wren's watch ; nor the silver 
pistol which Peter the Great ravished from a Turkish Bey ; 
nor paintings on silk by Labelle, little delicate trifles as 
pretty as Baxter prints; nor enough broken pieces of 
statuary — gargoyles, busts, capitals, and so forth — to 
build a street of grottoes ; nor the famous alabaster sarcoph- 
agus of Seti I, King of Egypt about 1370 b.c. 

Taken as a whole it is an odd and bewilderingly bizarre 
collection brought together by an acquisitive and, I sus- 
pect, rather childish man, with apparently little sense of 
beauty but very catholic taste, who seems to have been 



DR. JOHNSON AGAIN 143 

unable to resist any temptation to add one curiosity to 
another. Among the pictures at any rate there is a vast 
deal of rubbish, and everywhere is too much to see, the 
rooms being small and gloomy. There is the further diffi- 
culty of the custodians, the Cerberi. "Do people ever 
take advantage of the invitation to use this church for re- 
tirement and prayer.'*" was the question put once to a 
City verger. "Yes," he replied, or so the old story goes, 
" I catched two of 'em at it the other day." This pleasant 
anecdote was in my mind all the time I moved among Sir 
John Soane's impedimenta. " If I were to spend any time 
looking at this or that," I said to myself, "that patriarch 
over there with the drowsy yet disapproving eye might 
catch me at it. And what then?" So I moved on and 
on until I was once again in Lincoln's Inn's Fields, and 
the voices of the children in the enclosure told me that I 
was free : that here was humanity again, here was active 
Ufe. 

It is the duty of all who now take a walk down Fleet 
Street to visit the scenes associated with the great name 
of Johnson. Dr. Johnson's house in Gough Square still 
stands, throbbing with printing presses: you may still 
thread Bolt Court: you may worship, as he did, in St. 
Clement Danes'. But whether the wooden seat in the 
Cheshire Cheese which bears a brass plate sanctifying it to 
the Doctor was really his is another matter. None the 
less it has drawn many English sightseers and all Ameri- 
cans. The Cheshire Cheese, together with one or two 
chop-houses in the city where willow pattern plates and 
two-pronged forks are still used, represents the old guard in 
English restauration. How long they will be able to hold 
out I dare not prophesy: but not, I fear, long. There 
are indeed already signs at the Cheshire Cheese that devo- 



144 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

tion to old ideas is not what it was. The famous pudding 
(lark and oyster, steak and kidney) was produced, I seem 
to recollect, with more ritual, more of an air, ten years ago 
than to-day. I have eaten of it but once, and shall eat of 
it no more. Not to my charge shall be laid the luring of any 
sweet-voiced lark into a Fleet Street kitchen, or indeed any 
kitchen whatsoever; but others have other views, and for 
them the arrival of the dish has long been one of London's 
crowded moments. Americans cross the Atlantic to par- 
take of it and write their opinion in the visitors' book, 
which, not less depressingly facetious than all its kind, is 
rather more interesting by reason of an occasional name 
that has some artistic correlation. Old ale, a sanded floor, 
hot punch, and seats of a discomfort beyond that of the 
old third-class railway compartments or a travelling circus, 
complete the illusion of Johnsonian revelry. 

More than any other street Fleet Street, in spite of all 
its new buildings, has kept an old London feeling. I think 
this is due in a great measure to its irregular fagades, each 
one different and some very odd, and its many clocks and 
signs. To look down Fleet Street on a sunny afternoon is 
to get a very vivid sense of almost eighteenth-century 
animation. Modern as it all is, it always recalls to my mind 
the Old London street at one of the early South Kensing- 
ton exhibitions. Every variety of architecture may be seen 
here — from the putative palace of Cardinal Wolsey to the 
Daily Telegraph office, from Sell's new building, with its 
sundial, to St. Dunstan's-in-the-West ; while to glance 
down Middle Temple Lane is to have a genuine peep at 
the eighteenth century. 

St. Dunstan's-in-the-West is Fleet Street's jewel, with its 
very curious, very beautiful, open-work tower, as exceptional 
in its way as St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, although not the 




ADMIRAL PULIDO-PAREJA 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY VELASQUEZ IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



THE COGERS 145 

artistic equal of that delicate structure. The architect of 
the western St. Dunstan's was one Shaw, and it is not yet 
eighty years of age, all the old associations belonging to 
that which preceded it — the St. Dunstan's under whose 
shadow Charles Lamb says he was born ; in which Donne 
preached ; and which in the seventeenth century was sur- 
rounded by booksellers' shops, among them Smethwick's, 
who published Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, and Marriot's, 
who put forth The Compleat Angler. The other Fleet 
Street church, St. Bride's, which is just off the road on the 
south, is older and has far more dignity: it is indeed one 
of Wren's finest efforts. Elsewhere I have said something 
of the spire under a busy sky. In a house in the church- 
yard Milton once lived, and beneath the church lies the 
author of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, under the central 
aisle. 

It is at the Barley Mow, close by, in Salisbury Square, 
that the ancient society of the Cogers hold their parliament 
every Saturday night and settle questions of state over pipe 
and glass. One should certainly visit one of these debates, 
where so many speakers have first raised their voices and 
demolished the Government. Students of race will not be 
surprised to hear that there was never a Cogers* palaver 
without a brogue in it. 



CHAPTER XI 

ST. PAUL'S AND THE CHARTERHOUSE 

Observing in London — The London gaze — A few questions — St. 
Paul's — Sir Christopher Wren — Temples of Prosperity — Spires 
of Genius — St. Paul's from a Distance — London from St. Paul's — 
The High Roads to the Country — Florid Monuments — An Anom- 
aly — The Great Painters — The Thames Streets — Wren again — 
Billingsgate — St. Sepulchre's and Condemned Men — The Great 
Fire — The Cock Lane Ghost — Bartholomew's Hospital — St. 
Bartholomew the Great — A Wonderful Church — Cloth Fair — 
Smithfield Martyrs — The Charterhouse — The Old Gentlemen — 
Famous Schoolboys — A Spring Walk — Highgate and Hampstead 
Heath — The Friendly Inns — A word on Hampstead and Kate 
Greenaway 

THERE are so many arresting movements in London, 
as indeed in all hives of men, that to observe widely 
is very difficult. Just as one is said not to be able to see 
a wood for trees, so one cannot rightly see a city for its 
citizens, London for its Londoners. I believe, to give an 
example of defective London observation, that one's tend- 
ency is to think that all its greater streets are straight; 
whereas hardly any are. Here is a question on that fallacy 
suggested to me one day as I stood at the point which we 
have now reached : " From the middle of the road under 
the railway Bridge at the foot of Ludgate Hill how much 
of St. Paul's do you see ? " I would wager that the majority 
of Londoners would expect to see the whole fa9ade; but 
they would be very wrong. 

In one of his delightful books Dr. Jessopp remarks that 
whereas country people look up, Londoners look down. It 

146 



LONDON SURPRISES 147 

is largely this habit that has limited their observing powers; 
but London has itself to blame. I assume that one can 
observe well only by taking large views, and in London 
this is impossible, even if one would, partly from the cir- 
cumscribing effect of bricks and mortar, partly from the 
dim light of a London distance, and partly from the need 
of avoiding collisions. One's eyes unconsciously acquire a 
habit of restricted vision : our observation specialises, like 
that of the little girl in Mrs. Meynell's book, who beguiled 
the tedium of her walks by collecting shopkeepers named 
Jones. Perhaps that is the kind of observation for which 
we in London have become best suited. 

I remember how amazed I was, some years ago, when 
one clear Sunday morning, as I was walking in Fleet Street, 
I chanced on looking down Bouverie Street to see, framed 
between its walls, the Crystal Palace gleaming in the far 
distance. That, however, was an exceptional sight. Far 
less uncommon yet quite obvious characteristics cause as- 
tonishment when they are pointed out. It comes, for 
example, as a surprise to many people if you refer to the 
hill in Piccadilly. "What hill.?" they ask. Indeed, if 
there is one thing more remarkable than one's own ignor- 
ance of London, it is that of other people. Walking one 
day in Cheapside, from west to east, I was struck by the 
unfamiliar aspect of the building which blocked the end of 
that thoroughfare. It turned out to be a new set of offices 
at the foot of Cornhill, and it caused me to wonder how 
many people shared my belief that as one walks eastwards 
down Cheapside one ought to have a full view of the Stock 
Exchange ; which is not, as a matter of fact, visible until 
one is almost out of the Poultry. And this error led me 
to examine other similar fancies, and in many cases to find 
them equally wrong. I amused myself in consequence by 



148 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

drawing up a little paper in London topography, or rather 
in London observation. Here are a few of the questions 
which I jotted down : — 

1. If the Nelson column were to fall intact upon its side 
in a due southerly direction, where would Nelson's head lie ? 

2. If circumstances should confine your perambulations 
to an area comprised in a radius of three hundred yards 
from the Griffin in Fleet Street, what streets and how much 
of them would be open to you? Could you get to the 
theatre ? 

3. Give in detail the route of what is in your opinion 
the shortest walking-distance from (a) St. Pancras to Vic- 
toria, (6) Paddington to London Bridge, (c) the Lyceum 
to Oxford Circus, (d) the Zoological Gardens to the Albert 
Hall, (e) the Bank to the Tower, (/) Seat P4 in the British 
Museum Reading Room to seat C7. 

4. Between what points of the compass do the following 
streets run: the Strand, Northumberland Avenue, Fen- 
church Street, Edgware Road, Knightsb ridge, Tottenham 
Court Road, Cockspur Street, Bow Street, Whitehall, 
Westminster Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and London Bridge ? 

5. Give the right cab fare between Charing Cross and (a) 
the Elephant and Castle, (b) the Spaniards, (c) Liverpool 
Street, (d) the Marble Arch, (e) the Brompton Oratory, 
(/) the People's Palace, (g) the Agricultural Hall. Add 
the cabman's probable demand to each. 

6. If you followed that diameter of the four-mile radius 
which starts from the West Hill, Highgate, where would 
you collide with the opposite circumference .'' 

7. Does it surprise you to learn that Westminster Bridge, 
if continued in a straight line for two or three miles on the 
Surrey side, would run into Tower Bridge, or somewhere 
very near it ? 



SIR CHRISTOPHER 149 

8. Where are Hanging Sword Alley and Whetstone 
Park? 

Of St. Paul's Cathedral I find it very difficult to write. 
Within, it is to me the least genial of cathedrals, the least 
kindly. It has neither tenderness nor mystery. I would 
not call it exactly hard and churlish, like some of the 
whitewashed Lutheran temples : it is simply so much 
noble masonry without sympathy. 

Wren, of course, had no religion : one sees that in every 
church he built. He was a wonderful architect ; he heaped 
stone on stone as no Englishman has ever done, before or 
since ; one feels that he must have known by inspired pre- 
vision exactly how the smoke and fog of the future would 
affect his favourite medium; but he had no religion, no 
secret places in his soul, no colour. His churches are 
churches for a business man, and a successful one at that : 
not for a penitent, not for a perplexed and troubled soul, 
not for an emotional sufferer. Poor people look out of 
place in them. Wren's churches are for prosperity. 

To make satisfying exteriors — especially to make the 
right spires — was Wren's happy destiny. He never, or 
almost never, failed. Within, his churches are for the 
most part merely consecrated comfortable rooms : without, 
they are London's most precious, most magical possession. 
At first they may not please ; but — and especially if one 
studies the city from a height — one comes to realise their 
beauty and their extraordinary fittingness. On a bright 
day of scudding clouds, such as I remember in January 
of this year, when I was sitting in a room at the highest 
point of the Temple, the spire of a Wren church can have 
as many expressions, can reflect as many moods, as a 
beautiful and intelligent woman. I was watching St. 
Bride's with absolute fascination as it smiled and frowned, 
doubted and understood. 



150 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

St. Paul's of course can hardly be ranked with Wren's 
churches at all: it is so vast, so isolated. It is too vast 
in its present Anglican hands for human nature's daily 
needs. The Roman Catholics, by their incense, their con- 
fessionals, their constant stream of worshippers, their little 
side chapels, their many services, and, perhaps most of all, 
by their broken-light, bring down even their largest cathe- 
drals to reasonable dimensions, so that one does not feel 
lost in them. They might humanise St. Paul's. But as 
it is, St. Paul's is a desert : nothing is done for you, and 
its lighting is almost commercial. The dominant impres- 
sion it conveys is of vastness : one emerges with no hush 
on one's soul. 

St. Paul's should, I think, be loved from a distance ; an 
interview should not be courted. The triumph of St. Paul's 
is that, vast and serene, it broods protectively over the 
greatest city in the world, and is worthy of its office. The 
dome is magnificent : there is nothing finer : and that to me 
is St. Paul's — a mighty mothering dome ; not cold aisles 
and monstrous groups of statuary, not a whispering gallery 
and worried mosaics, not Americans with red guide books 
and typists eating their lunch. All that I want to forget. 

St. Paul's best appeal, true appeal, is external. It has 
no religious significance to me: it is the artistic culmina- 
tion of London city, it is the symbol of London. And as 
such it is always thrilling. One of the best near views is 
from the footbridge from Charing Cross to Waterloo ; one 
of the best distant views is from Parliament Hill. By no 
effort of imagination can one think of London without it. 

Yet go to St. Paul's one must, if only to reverse this 
view and see London from its dome. On a clear day, 
which in London means a windy day, you cannot have a 
more interesting sight than this great unwieldy city from 




ST. PAULS FKOM THE RIVER 



THE GREAT ROADS 151 

the ball of its sentinel cathedral — all spread out on every 
side, with a streak of river in the midst : all grey and busy 
right away to the green fields. 

To trace the great roads from this height is one of the 
most interesting things. For it is pleasant to think that 
all the roads even of the crowded congested business centre 
take one in time into the country, into the world, right to 
the sea. In time, for example, Ludgate Hill is going to be 
Fleet Street, and Fleet Street the Strand, and the Strand 
King William Street, and so on to Leicester Square and 
Coventry Street and Piccadilly; and Piccadilly leads to 
Hounslow and Staines and the west of England. Behind 
us is Cannon Street, which leads to London Bridge and 
the Borough High Street and Tabard Street to Watling 
Street and Gravesend and Rochester and the Kentish coast : 
or via London Bridge and the Borough High Street, to 
Newington Causeway, to Clapham, Epsom, Leatherhead 
and Dorking to the Sussex coast ; or through Guildford to 
the Hog's Back and Hampshire. Cheapside leads to Corn- 
hill and Leadenhall Street and Aldgate, and Aldgate to the 
Whitechapel Road and Romford, Brentford, Chelmsford 
and the east; Bishopsgate leads to Edmonton, Hoddes- 
den, Cheshunt, Ware and the north-east; the City Road 
leads to Islington, Highgate, and the North; and Cheap- 
side to Holborn, Oxford Street, the Edgware Road, St. 
Albans and the north-west. From the ball of St. Paul's 
one can follow all these roads for a little way on their great 
journeys. 

A few years ago such eventualities were not considered 
as they now are, the Londoner associating liberty only 
with the rail. But now that the motor car has come, the 
road has returned to its own again, not only in fact but in 
our thoughts. No motorist thinks only of the portion of 



152 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

road that he happens to be on : he looks ahead and thinks 
of its course and destination. This is good. This is one 
of the best things that the motor has done. Compared 
with such an enlargement of vision, such a quickening of 
the imagination, its speed is unimportant. The motor's 
great achievement is its gift of England to the Enghsh, 
the home counties to the Londoner. 

It is in St. Paul's that our great soldiers and sailors and 
painters are commemorated. The painters are modest; 
but the monuments to the warriors are large and florid 
(rather like the Dutch), usually personifying the hero in 
action. Nothing is so wrong as for sculpture to perpetuate 
an arrested movement: great art, and particularly mar- 
morial art, treats of repose ; but the sculptors of St. Paul's, 
the Bacons, and Bailleys, and Westmacotts, did not think 
so, and we therefore have Sir Ralph Abercromby for ever 
falling from his horse, and Sir John Moore for ever being 
just lowered into his grave, though not at all as the poem 
describes. Latterly, however, taste has improved, for the 
Wellington monument has dignity and tranquillity, while 
Lord Leighton's sarcophagus is beautiful. 

The old rule which seems to have insisted upon every 
statue being eight feet high, although doubtless a wise one 
in so large a building, leads to some rather quaint effects : 
as when one comes suddenly upon a half-naked Colossus of 
truculent mien, fit opponent for Hackenschmidt, and finds 
the name of Samuel Johnson beneath it. Anomalies in 
marble are so very noticeable. There seems to me to be 
another of a more serious nature in the bas-relief memorial 
to the ofiicers and men of the 57th West Middlesex who 
perished in the Crimea and New Zealand, the subject of 
which is Christ comforting the mourners : for the logician 
might so easily point out that had the law of Christ not 



THE THAMES STREETS 153 

been broken the cause of mourning would not have existed. 
One's feeUng is that Christ should not be here : it is not so 
much over dead soldiers as over the living that He must 
mourn. But every church which, like St. Paul's, glorifies 
war and warriors, is of course in a very delicate position. 
England is, however, the last country in which to say so. 

For other memorials to distinguished men one must de- 
scend, at a cost of sixpence, into the crypt (the soldiers and 
sailors above are free), where Sir Christopher Wren lies, 
and where many of the greatest painters are buried — 
among them Turner and Reynolds, Lawrence and Millais. 
Here too lie Nelson and Wellington. 

One of the parts of commercial London that I like best 
is the slope of the hill between St. Paul's and the river. All 
kinds of old narrow lanes wind down this hill to the water, 
crossing Upper Thames Street on the way — all strongly 
stamped by the past and all very busy and noisy. No- 
where in London do the feet of horses make so clattering a 
disturbance as hereabouts, and the motor vehicle has hardly 
yet found its way here. These lanes with the odd names — 
Godliman Street, Benet Lane, Sermon Lane, Trig Lane, 
Distaff Lane, Little Divinity Lane, Garlick Hill, College 
Hill, Stew Lane — are all winding and narrow and obsolete, 
and without exception, contrary to the best interests of 
business ; yet they persist, and one is glad of it. And all 
make for the wharves and the river, and ultimately the 
open sea. 

The Great Fire made very short work of Thames Street 
— as indeed a fire always does of riverside buildings — and 
everything that one now sees dates from the hither side of 
that disaster. The churches are all Wren's, whose in- 
dustry amazes more and more : — St. Benet's (where Inigo 
Jones is buried) ; St. James's in Garlickhithe (with a figure 



154 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

of the apostle over its fine assertive clock) ; St. Michael's, 
on College Hill, with some carving of Wren's confederate 
Grinling Gibbons, and a window to Dick Whittington, who 
was buried here as often as he was Lord Mayor of London. 
By Cannon Street's arch one passes the very thinnest end 
that any architectural wedge ever had, and so comes into 
Lower Thames Street, where we quickly find Wren again 
— at St. Magnus the Martyr, at the foot of Fish Street 
Hill, on which the Monument, like a tall bully, lifts its 
head and lies. St. Magnus's is one of London's larger 
churches, and in its way is very fine. Miles Coverdale, who 
gave the English their Bible, is buried here. The glass is 
not good, not is it good in any Wren church that I have 
seen, but it rarely reaches a lower point than in St. Dun- 
stan's-in-the-East (which has the beautiful tower). Before 
we come to this church we pass Pudding Lane, where the 
Great Fire began (we shall see directly where it stopped), 
and to Billingsgate fish market. Both the Thames Streets, 
Upper and Lower, are very genuine, and very interesting, 
with their warehouses and their wharves; although I 
should feel there by night that one must meet rats. The 
whole walk from Blackfriars Station to the Tower is worth 
taking, with plenty of material to the hand of a Meryon or 
Muirhead Bone on the way ; but at Billingsgate I draw the 
line — Billingsgate, which is always muddy whatever the 
weather, and always noisy and slimy and fishy beyond words. 
One comes away indeed vowing never to eat fish again. 
From St. Paul's, when I was last there, I walked to 
the church of St. Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, 
feeUng that I needed a little Norman and Early Enghsh 
humanising in the genuine atmosphere of antiquity; for 
St. Paul's, for all its sacred dust, is too much hke the 
mausoleum of a millionaire Lord Mayor. I walked 



THE CRIMINAL'S CHURCH 155 

through one of the narrow passages into Paternoster Row, 
and so to Amen Corner and Warwick Lane; where I 
peeped into Amen Court, that quiet ecclesiastical back- 
water where St. Paul's canons live, but have at the present 
moment no Sydney Smith among them, and no Thomas 
Ingoldsby. I peeped also into Warwick Square, one of 
whose old residential houses still stands amid the offices, 
with a top hamper of woodwork and a parliament of 
pigeons on its coping. And so on into Newgate Street, 
where all is changing so rapidly — Christ's Hospital being 
just now (1906) a vast open space, and grim and dignified 
Newgate prison having given way to the florid new Central 
Criminal Court in yellow stone with its gold figure of 
Justice on top. St. Sepulchre's Church has not yet been 
pulled down, it is true; but I suppose it has merely been 
overlooked, so noble is it and worthy of preservation. 

St. Sepulchre's, whose four vanes and their inability to 
swing exactly together have made a city proverb, has a 
long association with crime which, however kindly meant, 
lends it a sinister air. Its clock for centuries gave the hours 
to the hangman at Newgate across the way: at first to 
warn him that it was time to start for Tyburn, and later 
that the moment was ripe for the execution in the prison 
itself. Life must have been very interesting and full — 
to the innocent or undetected — in Holborn and Oxford 
Street in those old days when condemned men were hanged 
at Tyburn tree : processions so constantly passing, with 
every circumstance of publicity and ribaldry. St. Sepul- 
chre's connection with executions did not end at merely 
giving the time : it had refinements of torture at its fingers' 
ends. By the zeal of a citizen of London named Robert 
Dowe, who left a sum of money for the purpose, the clerk 
of the church was forced to take his bell in hand on the 



156 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

eve of a hanging, and proceed twice, once at night and 
once in the morning, to the prison, where, standing be- 
neath the window of the wretch's cell, he gave out certain 
tolls and called upon him in a dreary rhyme to make his 
peace with God if he would avoid eternal flames. And 
then, on the departure of the cart for Tyburn, the clerk 
had to appear again and offer prayers; and lest any of 
these searching attentions were omitted or shirked, the 
Beadle of the Merchant Taylors' Hall was provided with 
a stipend to see that the clerk duly carried them out with 
a becoming Christian rigour. So much for St. Sepulchre's 
official interest in the condemned; but it played also an 
amateur part in another and prettier, although not much 
humaner, ritual, for it was from its steps that a nosegay 
was presented to every traveller to that Tyburn from which 
none returned. 

Our church has fifteenth-century masonry in it, but 
for the most part is seventeenth, having been destroyed 
by the Great Fire. St. Sepulchre's was indeed that de- 
stroyer's last ecclesiastical victim, for a few yards farther 
up Giltspur Street, at Pie Corner, it died away and was 
no more, having raged all the way from Pudding Lane 
by the Monument. Pie Corner was just by Cock Lane, 
the scene, in 1762, of the most ridiculous imposture which 
ever laid London by the heels — the Cock Lane ghost. 
When last I stood looking down this lane, which now 
belongs almost entirely to commerce, a catsmeat man 
went by, pushing a barrow and calling his wares, and it 
seemed he must have v>^alked straight out of one of Ho- 
garth's pictures. 

I have said in an earlier chapter that Shepherd's Market 
in Mayfair gives one the best impression at this moment 
of the busy shopkeeping London of the Augustan essayists. 




SAINT HELENA 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY PAULO VERONESE IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT 157 

The best idea of a London of an earlier time that still 
remains, is I think to be found in Cloth Fair and Bar- 
tholomew Close, where sixteenth-century houses still stand, 
and sixteenth-century narrownesses and dirt are every- 
where. If there is the true old London anywhere, it is 
in the passages on the north side of St. Bartholomew the 
Great. 

But before we reach Bartholomew Close we must pass 
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, or Barts' as it is called, on the 
south side of Smithfield, one of London's great temples of 
healing. Its square in summer is quite a little park, with 
its patients taking the air and the children playing among 
them, and there is always a bustle of students and nurses 
and waiting-maids, crossing and re-crossing from one grey 
building to another. 

The way to Bartholomew Close is through the hospital 
to Little Britain, and so into this ramifying old-world 
region, once a centre of printers (Benjamin Franklin 
learned his trade there) and now given up to warehouses and 
offices and in its narrow parts to small shops ; but never for 
an instant belonging to the twentieth century or even the 
nineteenth. 

The church itself — St. Bartholomew the Great — is one 
of the architectural jewels of the city. Not that it is so 
perfect or so beautiful ; but that it is so curious, so genuine, 
so un- Wrenlike, so unexpected, so modest. I think its 
humility and friendliness are its greatest charm. It hides 
away behind West Smithfield's houses, with its own little 
crazy graveyard before it, but keeps its door always open. 
You enter and are in the middle ages. 

I am not attempting to describe the church, which is a 
very attractive jumble of architectural styles, with a tri- 
forium that one longs to walk round, and noble doors, 



158 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

and massive Norman pillars, and a devious ambulatory. 
Indeed there is no need, for no London church is so often 
depicted. On the morning I was last there it was like 
students' day at the National Gallery, as many as four 
young women being hard at work transferring different 
aspects to paper, while two others were engaged on Prior 
Bolton's window, which is a kind of private box in the 
south side of the choir, built into one of the arches of 
the triforium, where this prior, who jBourished early in the 
sixteenth century, may have sat. 

An older relic still is the coloured tomb of the founder — 
in the sanctuary — the merry and melodious Rahere, who 
founded the Priory of St. Bartholomew in the reign of 
Henry I. Seven Henries later it was of course dissolved. 
Having loitered sufficiently in the church, one should walk 
round its exterior and make a point of seeing the sexton's 
house (to which I have already alluded) which cHngs to 
the north wall as a child to its mother — the quaintest old 
house in London, with its tiny Tudor bricks and infinitesi- 
mal windows. 

Cloth Fair begins here, a congeries of narrow streets and 
dreadful old women, where once was the centre of the 
drapery trade that now flourishes in St. Paul's Churchyard. 
From Cloth Fair I passed into Smithfield's large vacancy, 
where Bartholomew Fair — which was in its serious side 
a fair for cloth — used to be held every Bartholomew's 
Day until 1855, when the law stepped in and said No. The 
pleasure portion was the most extraordinary chaos of catch- 
penny booths, theatricals, jeroe naturce, wild beasts, cheap 
jacks and charlatans that England has ever seen; and I 
like to think that Charles Lamb led William Wordsworth 
through it in 1802. 

"And were men and women really willing to burn for 



THE CHARTERHOUSE 159 

their faith ? " one asks, as one stands here amid the rail- 
way vans. How strange, to-day, it all seems ! Unless 
something very wonderful and miraculous happens there 
will never be another martyr burnt at Smithfield. Martyr- 
dom is out of fashion ; and yet that was only three hundred 
and fifty years ago. 

Through the fleshly horrors of Smithfield Market, where 
Hebrew middlemen smoke large cigars, I advise no one to 
wander : it is discipline enough for us to have been created 
carnivorous; and Charterhouse Square, whither we are 
now bound, can be reached easily by Long Lane and Hayne 
Street, well outside the domain of the carcase and the 
bloodstained porter. 

To Charterhouse Square, a region of peace, within sound 
of Aldersgate's commercial zeal, we are coming, not to see 
its hotels for city men, or the Merchant Taylors' school, or 
even the two very charming Georgian houses that are left, 
but solely to explore the monastery that gives it its name. 
After a curiously varied career, the Charterhouse is now 
fixed (I hope for many centuries to come, although the 
gate porter tells me alarming stories of offers from specu- 
lative builders) as an almshouse for old gentlemen. It was 
built in the fourteenth century as a monastery for Car- 
thusians. Then came the dread Henry VIII with his 
odd and implacable conscience, hardly less devastating 
than the speculative builder or the modern County 
Councillor, who cast out the monks and beheaded the 
prior, and made the house a private residence for rich 
courtiers — Sir Thomas Audley, Lord North, the Duke of 
Northumberland, the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Suffolk 
in turn occupying it and entertaining there. But in 1611 
Mr. Thomas Sutton bought it and endowed it with a sum 
of .£200,000 as a hospital and a school. In the school 



160 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

forty boys were to be educated free, with sixty others who 
paid fees; in the hospital "eighty gentlemen by descent 
and in poverty " were to be maintained — above the age of 
fifty, if sound, but of forty, if maimed in war. Both in- 
tentions were admirably realised, although changes have 
come in. In 1872, for example, the school was moved to 
Godalming, and in 1885 the number of pensioners was 
reduced by twenty-five owing to loss of revenue. But the 
fifty-five that remain could not spend their declining days 
more sweetly and serenely than within these grey walls, 
with their comfortable rooms and the best fires I saw in 
London this last winter. 

The Charterhouse is very beautiful, very quiet. Its most 
famous pensioner, although an imaginary one, will always 
be Colonel Newcome — a proper tribute to the genius of 
Thackeray, who was educated at the school here. Among 
its pensioners in real life have been such different dramatists 
as Elkanah Settle and John Maddison Morton, the author 
of Box and Cox. Among famous schoolboys of the Charter- 
house — old Carthusians, as we call them — some of whom 
are celebrated in the little passage that leads to the chapel, are 
John Leech and George Grote, Addison and Steele, Crashaw 
and Blackstone, John Wesley and Sir Henry Havelock. 

The last time I went to the Charterhouse was the first 
day of spring this year, and when I came out the sky was 
so clear and the air so soft that I gave up all my other 
plans, and turning into Aldersgate, walked all the way to 
Highgate : up Aldersgate, which is now wholly commercial 
but which in Tudor times was fashionable ; up the Goswell 
Road (where Mr. Pickwick lodged with Mrs. Bardell) ; 
along Upper Street, that fine old-world highway; past 
Islington Green, now a municipal enclosure; through 
Highbury ; up the long Holloway Road (where I weakened 




•ii-'^r . ^> 



M >r 



^.M 




THE CHARTERHOUSE 



THE SPANIARD'S 161 

and took a tram) ; up Highgate Hill ; and so to that healthy 
northern suburb where time still tarries. All this I did for 
old sake's sake, because it was at Highgate, on the very top 
of the hill, that I used to live — just north of the Grove, 
where Carlyle heard Coleridge discourse endlessly of the 
sum-jective and the om-jective. 

Tome Highgate is still London's most fascinating suburb, 
for it has a quietness and an unpretentiousness that are 
foreign to Hampstead. On how many sweet May evenings 
have I walked along Hampstead Lane to the Spaniard's, 
past Caen's dark recesses, where it is whispered badgers are 
still to be found, and sitting in one of the tavern's arbours, 
have heard the nightingale singing in Bishop's Wood. The 
Spaniard's in those days, ten years ago, was one of the best 
of the old London inns still surviving — without the Ger- 
man waiter and the coloured wine glasses to bring in the 
false new note. And I was never tired of leading my 
friends thither to show them Dick Turpin's knife and fork 
in a case on the wall. Sometimes we would walk on to 
Jack Straw's Castle, along that fine high ridge way across the 
Heath known as the Spaniard's Road, and watch London 
twinkling far away beneath us. Or disregarding Jack 
Straw's Castle (where the Fourth Party were wont to re- 
cuperate and plan new audacities), we would plunge down 
from Constable's Knoll of Scotch firs, over rough sandy 
bridle paths, to the Bull and Bush in the hollow at North 
End, and there find refreshment. 

I am speaking of the spring and summer; but Hamp- 
stead Heath is not less attractive in winter too, and in 
winter there used to be at the Bull and Bush a brew of 
barley wine, as it was called, that was very warming. 
Such brews are no longer common. What one misses from 
London windows in winter is any alluring invitation to hot 



162 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

cordial drinks. The publicans announce the commence- 
ment of the goose club, but there is no longer any tidings of 
mulled ale. It is sad but true that the Londoner's — in- 
deed I might say the Englishman's — first and last word 
in alcoholic cheer is whisky. Even in the coldest weather 
no stand is made for the genial beverages of the past. To 
the end Dickens brewed punch and saw that it was good ; 
but with Dickens, or very shortly after, passed away all 
interest in that enkindling Christianising bowl. They 
still mix it at the Cheshire Cheese ; and as the dying year 
1905 turned for the last time upon his pillow, a glass of it 
was handed to me by the host in whose company (and that 
of some hundreds of others) I was honouring the obsequies ; 
but punch is rarely seen, and I am sorry for it. 

And who now asks for a port wine negus .? But when I 
first came to London in 1892, in the good old days when 
Furnivall's Inn still stood, and Ridler's Hotel beamed 
hospitably across Holborn, I used to frequent a little inner 
sitting-room in that hostelry, where long clay pipes were 
provided, and where a stately waiter, more like the then 
Speaker of the House of Commons (now Lord Peel) than 
any waiter has a right to be, used to bring a negus that 
was worth drinking, with cinnamon floating on the top 
like driftwood after a wreck. 

Will there never come a mixer of hot and kindling 
beverages who, perhaps taking a Dickensian name, will 
wean the world from an undiscriminating devotion to 
whisky ? Pineapple rum hot, with three lumps — nowhere 
now can one drink this fragrant concoction. And the 
other pleasantly-sounding comforters with which Mr. 
Pickwick and his friends and the people they met on the top 
of coaches were wont to make themselves happy and aro- 
matic — where are they ? All past, with the stage coaches 



OLD HAMPSTEAD 163 

and the post chaises. This is an age of champagne and 
whisky, motor cars and rehgious novels. Mr. Pickwick 
and his leisure and his punch are no more. 

In Highgate and Hampstead I should love to linger: 
but they are outside the radius so far as this book is con- 
cerned. Yet of Hampstead I must say a word here, if only 
to correct the suggestion that it is pretentious. Pretentious 
only in its modern roads — its Fitzjohn's Avenues, and so 
forth: there is no pretentiousness about Church Row, 
which, until the flats were built on the north side, was the 
most beautiful English street I ever saw, or expect to see, 
and is still well worth climbing a hill ten times as steep as 
Hampstead's. With this early simple part of Hampstead, 
and the little passages and cottages between Church Row 
and the pond on the summit, the memory of Kate Green- 
away is in my mind inseparably bound. To think of one 
is to think of the other. One feels that she must have 
lived here ; as indeed she did — just below Church Row, in 
Frognal, but not, I grieve to say, in an old house. Hamp- 
stead has had many literary and artistic associations, from 
Keats (in Well Walk) to George du Maurier (in the Grove), 
but Kate Greenaway is my Hampstead symbol. 

I remember what a shock it was to hear that she was 
dead. For one had never thought of death in connection 
with this serene and joyous artist. Her name had called 
up for so long only pleasant, sunny associations : memories 
of green meadows with grave little girls and boys a-maying ; 
quiet, restful rooms (in Church Row !) with tiny fireplaces, 
daffodils in blue vases on the high mantelpieces, and grave 
little girls and boys a- playing; and trim streets, where 
everything was well-kept and well-swept, and all the roofs 
were red and all the garden gates and fences green, and 
more grave Httle girls carried dolls, and more grave little 



164 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

boys rolled hoops, and very young mothers with high waists 
gossiped over their grave little babies' infinitesimal heads. 
Some such scenes as these had for twenty years been rising 
before one whenever Kate Greenaway's name was heard, 
bringing with them a gentle breath of ancient repose and 
simplicity and a faint scent of pot pourri. And to think 
the hand that devised this innocent communism of quaint- 
ness and felicity, this juvenile Arcadia, was still for ever ! 
That was in 1901, when for some years Miss Greenaway 
had not been the power that once she was. Her greatest 
triumphs were in the early eighties, when she illustrated 
Ann and Jane Taylor's Original Poems, and wrote and 
illustrated verses of her own writing, and put forth every 
Christmas a little almanack, with scenes fitting to every 
month and delicate and dainty borders of the old-world 
flowers she loved best. It might almost be said that she 
invented the daffodil. That was the time when flowers 
were being newly discovered, and while the aesthetes were 
worshipping the sunflower and the lily Miss Greenaway 
was bidding the cheeriest little daisies spring from the 
grass and the chubbiest little roses burst from the bushes, 
and teaching thousands of uninitiated eyes how beautiful 
the daffodil is. Wordsworth had done so before, it is 
true; but between Wordsworth and Kate Greenaway 
how wide a gulf of stuffy taste was fixed — the forties, the 
fifties, the sixties, and the seventies ! Kate Greenaway 
came like a fresh southern breeze after a fog. The 
aesthetes were useful, but they were artificial: they never 
attained to her open-air radiances. In the words of a 
critic whom I was reading somewhere the other evening, 
Kate Greenaway newly dressed the children of England; 
and the effects of her influence will probably never be lost. 
And to a great extent she refurnished England too. There 
is not an intelligent upholsterer or furniture dealer in the 



KATE GREENAWAY 165 

country at this moment whose warehouses do not bear 
witness to Miss Greenaway's unobtrusive, yet effectual, 
teaching. She was the arch-priestess of happy simphcity. 
As an illustrator of dramatic stories, such as the domestic 
tragedies set forth by the sisters Taylor, or Bret Harte's 
Queen of Pirate Isle, or The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Miss 
Greenaway was not quite successful. Her genius bent 
rather to repose than action; or, at least, to any action 
more complex than skipping or dancing, picking flowers, 
crying, or taking tea. (No one in the whole history of art 
has drawn more attractive tea tables — old Hampstead tea 
tables, I am sure.) Drama was beyond her capacity, and 
her want of sympathy with anything unhappy or forceful 
also unfitted her. Her pictures prove her the soul of 
gentleness. Had she set out to make a tiger it would have 
purred like the friendliest tabby; nothing could induce 
her pencil to abandon its natural bent for soft contours 
and grave kindlinesses. Hence her crones were merely 
good-natured young women doing their best — and doing 
it very badly — to look old ; her witches were benevolent 
grandmothers. To illustrate was not her metier. But to 
create — that she did to perfection. She literally made a 
new world where sorrow never entered — nothing but the 
momentary sadness of a little child — where the sun always 
shone, where ugliness had no place and life was always 
young. No poet can do much more than this. It seems to 
me that among the sweet influences of the nineteenth cen- 
tury Kate Greenaway stands very high. The debt we owe 
to her is beyond payment ; but I hope that some memorial 
will be considered. Randolph Caldecott has a memorial in 
the crypt of St. Paul's ; Lewis Carroll in the Great Ormond 
Street Children's Hospital ; Kate Greenaway ought to have 
a group of statuary (in the manner of the Hans Christian 
Andersen monument) in Church Row, Hampstead. 



CHAPTER XII 

CHEAPSIDE AND THE CITY CHURCHES 

Crowded pavements — Sunday in the City — A receded tide of wor- 
shippers — Temples of Cheery Ease — Two Weekday Congrega- 
tions — St. Stephen's, Walbrook — Bishopsgate Churches — The 
Westminster Abbey of the City — Houndsditch toy shops — Post- 
men's Park — Bunhill Fields — The City Road — Colebrooke Row 
and Charles Lamb — London Pigeons — The Guildhall — A few 
words on Museums — The Carnavalet in Paris — The Lord Mayor 
in State — The City and Literature — In the wake of John Gilpin — 
To Tottenham and Edmonton — A Discovery and a Disillusion- 
ment 

WE are now in a part of London that really is too 
busy to wander in. London neither likes you to 
walk faster than itself nor slower ; it likes you to adopt its 
own pace. In the heart of the city you cannot do this and 
see anything. To study Cheapside and its narrow tribu- 
taries, the very narrowness of which is eloquent of the past 
and at the same time so much a part of the present that it 
is used in a thoroughly British manner to imprison carts 
and carters for five or six hours a day, you must choose a 
Sunday ; but if you can loiter in these parts on a Sunday 
without becoming so depressed as to want to scream aloud, 
you are made of sterner stuff than I. For my part, I would 
rather be actually bruised by the jostlings of Cheapside on 
Monday than have solitary elbow room there on the day of 
rest, when the cheerful shops are shut and the dreary bells 
ring out. For the city on Sunday is to me a wilderness of 

166 



THE CITY CHURCHES 167 

melancholy. Church bells are tolerable only when one 
hears a single peal: to hear many in rivalry is to suffer. 

The city churches are many and are well cared for : but 
their day is over. During the week we are too busy making 
money, or not making it, to spare time for religion ; while 
on Sunday we are elsewhere. What do these churches 
here } one asks. Other gods reign here. I do not wish 
to suggest that there are not city men who value the op- 
portunity which the open doors of the churches give them 
for a little escape from Mammon during the day ; but for 
the most part the city church strikes one as a monument 
to the obsolete. It belongs so completely to the period 
when merchants not only made their money in the city 
but lived there too; before Sydenham Hill and Brighton, 
Chislehurst and Weybridge, were discovered. No one lives 
in the city any longer, save the Lord Mayor and a few 
caretakers; and all the gentlemen who would once have 
convoyed their wives and families up the aisles into the 
lethargic pews are now either doing the same thing in the 
suburbs or evading that duty on the golf links. 

Times change: the city church remains, calm and self- 
possessed, offering sanctuary to anyone who needs it; but 
one cannot believe that were they all pulled down to-mor- 
row anyone would really resent it except a few simple- 
hearted old-fashioned city gentlemen and an aesthetic 
minority writing to the papers from Kensington, while 
the competition for the sites on which to erect commodious 
and convenient business premises would be instant and 
terrific. Personally I rarely go into the city without spend- 
ing a few minutes in one or other of these abodes of peace ; 
but that is a circumstance of no value, because I go to the 
city only out of curiosity. I am not of it ; indeed I am lost 
in it and I can find myself again only by resting awhile in 



168 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

one of these very formal havens. Silent they are not : the 
roar of the city cannot be quite shut out ; but one hears it 
only as one hears in a shell the murmur of the sea. 

Comfort — ecclesiastical comfort — is the note of the 
city church. It reflects the mind of the comfortable citizen 
for whom it was built, who liked things plain but good, and 
though he did not want so far to misbehave as to think of 
religion as a cheerful topic, was still averse from Calvinistic 
gloom. (In St. Michael's on College Hill, for instance, is 
a notice over the door bearing the congenial promise to 
the congregation : " Plenteousness within His palaces. ") 
The city church, although unmistakably a temple for the 
worship of the God of the Old Testament, has yet a hint 
of the kindliness that would belong to the New if Christians 
would only permit it. Take for example St. Mary Wool- 
noth's, just by the Mansion House. It is light, almost gay, 
but, I hasten to add, without a suggestion of the gaudi- 
ness of Rome. The black woodwork and the coloured 
walls have a pleasant effect. The pulpit is an interesting 
example of the cabinetmaker's art. There is seating ac- 
commodation for very few persons, and that guards against 
overcrowding. The heating arrangements are good. St. 
Botolph's, in Aldgate, at the corner of Houndsditch, is 
another bright and cheery little church. This has a gallery 
and some elaborate plaster work on the ceiling. Comfort 
and well-being are strongly in evidence — not to the point 
of decimating a golf links, of course, but comfort and well- 
being none the less. 

On Sundays these churches may be filled, for aught I 
know ; but my experience of their week-day services is not 
happy. One day this spring I looked into St. Lawrence, 
Jewry, just by the Guildhall, and found a portly dignified 
cleric repeating the commandments to a congregation of 



GREAT ST. HELEN'S 169 

four. I counted it — four, each sitting in a different part 
of the comfortable cushioned church, as far from the others 
as might be. Another day, during Lent, I looked into St. 
Margaret Pattens inEastcheap, at the corner of Rood Lane, 
and from the ceremonial and incense thought myself in 
Rome. But the congregation was minute. 

One of the most unexpected of London churches is St. 
Stephen's, Walbrook (behind the Mansion House), into the 
side of which a bookshop has been built. Without, it is 
nothing uncommon and its spire is ordinary Wren; but 
within it is very imposing and rather fine, having a lofty 
dome and a number of stately pillars. There is of course 
no religious feeling in it, but as a piece of grandiose archi- 
tecture it has merit. I do not, however, agree with a 
London friend whose advice to me was to disregard all the 
city churches so long as I saw this one. At the opposite 
pole is St. Ethelburga's in Bishopsgate Street Within, a 
very modest shrinking little fane. Like All Hallows, 
Barking, St. Ethelburga's escaped the Fire, and it stands, 
a relic of Early English architecture, in the midst of the 
busiest part of the city. But beyond its isolation, age, and 
simplicity, it has little to recommend it. Close by is Crosby 
Hall, the remains of Crosby Place, where Richard III once 
sojourned, and where, it is possible, parts of Utopia were 
written. After many vicissitudes and much renovation it 
is now a thriving restaurant. Its medievalism is perhaps a 
shade too much insisted upon, but certain genuine traces of 
antiquity still remain to lend a savour to one's chop. The 
famous city church of St. Helen's is in Great St. Helen's 
Place, a little to the south, and it is worth visiting for the 
tombs alone — for here lie London's greatest merchants, 
from Sir Thomas Gresham downwards : it is the West- 
minster Abbey of the city, the Valhalla of commerce. It 



170 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

has, however, one poet too; for the possibility that a 
WilHam Shakespeare who Hved in the parish in 1598 was 
the Swan of Avon has led an American gentleman to erect 
a window to the dramatist. 

Elsewhere I have said something of Norton Folgate and 
Shoreditch, the northern continuation of Bishopsgate 
Street. I might here remark that Houndsditch, which 
really was once a ditch, just outside the wall, is now the 
centre of the toy and cheap jewellery trade. It was in 
a shop there, after much hunting, that I ran down one 
of the old weather-cottages, with a little man and a little 
woman to swing in and out and foretell rain and shine 
— wrongly, for the most part, but picturesquely. 

In Leadenhall Street one may see where Lamb's India 
House stood; and Leadenhall Market, which fills several 
estuaries here, is interesting for its live-stock shops, where 
one may buy puppies and bantams, Persian cats and bull- 
finches, and even, I believe, foxes for the chase — if one 
sinks so low. Cornhill has two churches almost touching 
each other — St. Peter's and St. Michael's — but neither is 
interesting, although St. Michael's tower can catch the 
sun very pleasantly. 

For the most part the city church no longer has its 
graveyard ; or if it has, the graves have been levelled and 
a little green space for luncheon-hour recreation has been 
made instead. One of the pleasantest of these is that 
of St. Botolph Without, Aldersgate, which is known as 
Postmen's Park. It is here that the late G. F. Watts, 
the great painter, erected memorials to certain lowly heroes 
and heroines not in either of the heroic services, who saved 
Londoners' lives and perished in the effort. If anyone 
has a strong taste for graveyards he should certainly visit 
Bunhill Fields at Finsbury — if only to lose it. A crazy 






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ST. IJU.X.STAN S-IN-THE-EAST 



AMONG THE DEAD 171 

dirty place is this, with its myriad stones saturated with 
London soot and all awry, and the hum of factories on the 
northern side. Defoe's tomb is here, with an obelisk over 
it, and here also lie Bunyan and Isaac Watts, and William 
Blake and Thomas Stothard, two gentle old men who were 
rivals only in their painting of Chaucer's Pilgrims ; but one 
comes out in the depths of depression and had better 
perhaps not have entered. Opposite is a little museum 
of relics of John Wesley, whose statue is there too. 
Another great spiritual man, George Fox, lies close by, 
in the Friends' burial ground; but the Friends' museum 
is not here but in Devonshire House, in Bishopsgate Street 
Without, where many very interesting prints and books 
and pamphlets of the quiet folk may be seen. 

From Bunhill Fields one may climb the City Road on 
a tram — the City Road, once important, once having its 
place in the most popular comic song of the day, but now 
a kind of wilderness. The Eagle is now an ordinary public 
house, the Grecian's Corinthian period is over; and when 
I was here last, that most dismal sight, the demolition of 
a church, was to be seen. But the City Road is worth 
traversing if only for Colebrooke Row, at the end of 
which, in the last house on the north side, adjoining 
Duncan Terrace and next a ginger-beer factory, Charles 
Lamb once lived, in the days before the New River was 
covered over; and it was down Lamb's front garden that 
George Dyer walked when he fell into that stream. 

Colebrooke Row is still old-fashioned ; hardly anything 
has been done beyond covering the waterway. I de- 
scended to the banks of the canal, which, in its turn, runs 
at right angles beneath the New River, and talked with 
the captain of the tug which pulls the barges through 
the long low tunnel. And then I climbed to Colebrooke 



172 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Row again and roamed about Upper Street and all that 
is left of Islington Green, where a statue of Sir Hugh 
Myddleton stands, and wondered at the success with 
which Islington has kept itself a self-contained town en- 
tirely surrounded by houses, and walked awhile in Isling- 
ton churchyard, and then descended the squalid heights 
of Pentonville to King's Cross. I cannot call either 
Pentonville or Clerkenwell interesting, except for preserv- 
ing so much of the London of a hundred years ago. 

But meanwhile we are due in Cheapside again. 

The British Museum has the first name for pigeons in 
London — the pigeon being our sacred bird, our ibis — and 
truly there are none bigger : they have breasts like cannon 
balls ; but the Guildhall's birds are even tamer. In 
crossing the courtyard in front of the Guildhall one really 
has to step carefully to avoid treading on them, so casual 
are they and so confident that you will behave. 

The Guildhall has in its basement a collection of articles 
relating to the history of the city, which are sufficiently 
interesting to be well worth a visit. Relics of Roman 
occupation; old inn signs, including the Boar's Head in 
Eastcheap which Falstaff frequented; instruments of 
punishment from Newgate; old utensils and garments; 
prints and broadsheets ; and so forth. But that is not 
enough. London should certainly have a museum of some 
magnitude devoted wholly to its own wonderful history. 
That the Guildhall alone, in its very small subterranean 
way, should have to carry out this duty is yet another 
proof of the national want of interest in the past. What 
I said about statues in an earlier chapter applies equally 
to museums. Here again the French show us the way, 
although of course we shall not take it. Every nation, 
every city, has what it wants, and if London, the capital 



LONDON PRIDE AGAIN 173 

of the world, had wanted a museum to illustrate its history, 
it would have had one. But it wanted nothing so un- 
practical, so beside the mark, and it never will. This is 
partly because a London museum would have to spring 
into being at the command of public-spirited Londoners; 
and there are none. There are residents in various parts 
of London ; but when it comes to the point there are no 
Londoners. At least, there is no one of whom you could 
say — " He is so proud of London that he will do some- 
thing for it." You can find the man who in his Sydenham 
home at night, after dinner, is proud of the city ; you can 
find the Town Councillor at Battersea who is proud of 
Battersea; but that is all. There are no essential Lon- 
doners. 

If anyone wishes to see a museum illustrating the history 
of a city, let him go to the Carnavalet in Paris — the Musee 
Historique de la Ville. The Carnavalet is interesting for 
two reasons. One is that it is filled with interesting things ; 
another that these things are preserved in a house of great 
interest — once inhabited by Madame de Sevigne. It was 
built in the middle of the sixteenth century and stands in 
the midst of architectural coevals in an out-of-the-way part 
of the Faubourg of St. Antoine. Museums, I am con- 
vinced, should if possible be old houses: like the Cluny, 
also in Paris, and, at Antwerp, the Plantin ; or, in a small 
way, like the Wordsworth Museum at Dove Cottage, or 
the Carlyle Museum in Cheyne Row. But where is the old 
house in London to turn into an historical museum? 
" What's not destroyed by Time's avenging hand ? 

Where's Troy, and where's the maypole in the Strand ? " 
There is, it is true, the old Tudor building that is wrongly 
known as Cardinal Wolsey's Palace, by Temple Bar; but 
that is very small. I can think only of Staple Inn. 



174 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Carlyle's house is, indeed, an excellent model in minia- 
ture of the Carnavalet. Each is dominated by a single 
idea. Private piety supplies both ; but I imagine that the 
authorities of the French museum have a considerable fund 
with which to make purchases. If it were decided to es- 
tablish an historical museum of London, a careful study 
of the Carnavalet might well precede active operations. 
At the Carnavalet you begin with Roman and Merovingian 
antiquities and end with relics of almost the present day, 
all associated with the history of Paris. Amid the ordinary 
rank and file of curiosities, such as models and prints, one 
is continually coming upon something of poignant and 
unique interest: the chair in which Beranger died; the 
handle of Marat's bathroom ; the rope-ladder with which 
Latude escaped from the Bastille; Napoleon's dressing- 
case ; a painted mask of Voltaire, sardonic and alert, very 
nigh life ; a lace collar of Marie Antoinette ; the death- 
mask of Sainte-Beuve ; Louis XVI's signed order to the 
defenders of the Tuileries to cease firing; several of Ma- 
dame de Sevigne's letters ; Napoleon's death-mask ; Bal- 
zac's bedroom-door; relics of Madame Roland; and so 
forth. At every turn one is brought face to face with some 
vivid fact. After half a dozen visits to the Carnavalet one 
would know Paris intimately in all her stages and have 
also a quickened interest in her greatest sons. 

One is often much less struck in a museum by what is 
preserved than by what is absent. If these little things 
have been preserved, one thinks, where are the more con- 
siderable ones .'' For example, when one sees such an 
article as the handle of Marat's bathroom, which personally 
I do not greatly care for or value, and which perhaps 
might as well be at Madame Tussaud's, our national mu- 
seum of morbid relics, one asks oneself the question. Where 



PERSONAL RELICS 175 

is the bath itself ? If any tangible reminder of Charlotte 
Corday's crime had to be kept, why was it the bathroom 
handle ? It is true that she had to turn it with her 
avenging hand (one would give something to know how 
long her hand paused on it), but had she not a weapon? 
And was not the " squat individual " in a bath — a great 
indestructible vessel of metal ? Where is that ? No mat- 
ter : I do not want to see Marat's bath, or the Corday's 
knife. None the less one does want to know what has 
become of certain imperishable things, and perhaps the 
establishment of a London museum might bring some of 
them to light. Where are Dr. Johnson's cudgels ? Where 
are his wigs "? Where are the other old signboards ? The 
iron figures of St. Dunstan's in Fleet Street, which used to 
beat out the hours — the figures the removal of which 
brought Charles Lamb to tears — are now, I believe, in a 
garden in Regent's Park. They would, I have no doubt, 
be ceded to the museum at once. And, to leave London 
for the moment, where is the bowl in which Gray's cat was 
drowned ? Where is William Beldham's bat, described 
with such reverence by John Mitford ? It would be ex- 
tremely interesting anyway if some kind of a census of 
such personal relics could be taken. These are the things 
that such a director as the Carnavalet enjoys would bring 
together. 

I do not know how museums are begun, but one way 
would be to approach the task in the spirit of the Rev. 
James Granger. One would take a representative social 
history of London, such as Besant's, and make a note of all 
articles that would illustrate the text — utensils, weapons, 
books, pictures, portraits, relics. Gradually one would ac- 
quire a sound nucleus, and thenceforward all would be 
simple. In other words, a good museum is a Grangerised 
copy of life. 



176 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

The Lord Mayor's departure for or from the Guildhall 
is a piece of civic pomp that never fails to please the tolerant 
observer. He drives in a golden chariot, with four horses 
to draw it and two footmen to stand behind; while an 
officer in a cocked hat, carrying a sword, rides on in front, 
and mounted policemen serve as an escort. The Lord 
Mayor climbs in first, a figure of medieval splendour, in 
robes and furs and golden chain, more like a Rabbi in a 
Rembrandt picture than a London magistrate about to 
send a costermonger to prison; then another elderly and 
august masquerader is pushed in; and then the mace 
bearer is added, holding that bauble so that its head is well 
out of the window. The golden carriage, which is on cee 
springs and was built to carry Cinderella and none other, 
swings like a cradle as these medievalists sink into their 
seats. The powdered footmen leap to their station at the 
back; the coachman (who has recently figured on the 
London hoardings with a recommendation for metal polish, 
and is more than conscious of his identity) cracks his whip ; 
and the pageant is complete. Then the crowd of cynical 
Londoners — porters, clerks, errand boys, business men, 
who have, as Londoners always will, found time to observe 
the spectacle (and it is all one to them whether it is a Lord 
Mayor or a horse down) — melts, and the twentieth 
century once more resumes its sway. 

I am quite aware that I am treating the city too lightly ; 
but it cannot be helped. One chapter is useless : it wants 
many books. No sooner does one begin to burrow beneath 
the surface of it into the past than one realises how fascinat- 
ing but also how gigantic is the task before one. Reasons 
of space, apart from other causes, have held my pen. The 
literary associations of the city alone are endless. It is in 
TJireadneedle Street that Lamb's old South Sea House 



TRACKING THE GILPINS 177 

stood ; in Leadenhall Street we have just seen the modern 
representative of his East India House. It was in a house 
in Birchin Lane that the infant Macaulay, opening the 
door to his father's friend Hannah More, asked her to step 
in and wait while he fetched her a glass of old spirits, such 
as they drank in Robinson Crusoe. It was at the corner 
of Wood Street that Wordsworth's poor Susan imagined 
herself in the country; and here still stands a famous 
city tree, but this January (1906) has seen its limbs sadly 
lopped, and it will be years before it recovers any of its 
old beauty. 

It was in Cheapside that John Gilpin lived. I once 
made an interesting little journey from his house, which 
properly was at the corner of Paternoster Row, opposite the 
statue of Sir Robert Peel, in order to follow his great ride. 
It was some years ago, before the present building super- 
seded the old : the shop part was then a bookseller's, and 
above were various tenants, among them an aged instructor 
in the language of chivalry and Spain. It seemed to me 
that it would be an amusing thing to proceed on foot from 
John Gilpin's to the Bell of Edmonton, in the wake, so to 
speak, of this centaur manque ; and indeed it was, and more 
so, for it led to a grievous discovery. 

With the exception of the old parish churches that rise 
here and there from the waste of newer masonry, there 
now remains little between Cheapside and Tottenham that 
the Gilpins would recognise. The course of the highway 
is the same, but since their jaunt to Edmonton most of the 
houses have been built, and rebuilt, and built again ; rail- 
ways have burrowed under or leapt across the road ; tram 
metals have been laid down ; fire-stations have arisen ; and 
lamp-posts, like soldiers, have stepped out to line the pave- 
ments. These changes would hold the Gilpins spellbound 



178 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

were they suddenly re-incarnated to drive to Edmonton 
again to-day. Most, perhaps, would they marvel at the 
bicycles darting like dragon-flies between the vehicles, and 
the onset of the occasional motor car. Probably had 
motor cars come in in John Gilpin's day he would never 
have essayed that ride at all. If the braying of an ass were 
too much for his horsemanship, what of the horn and the 
exhaust pipe and the frantic machinery of the new vehicles ? 
The press of people would amaze them too, and the loss 
of green meadows sadden them. On the other hand, the 
absence of turnpike gates and charges would go far to 
restore gladness to Mrs. Gilpin's frugal mind. 

By the time Tottenham was reached, however, they all 
would be more at home again. The edge of their wonder 
would have been taken off, and familiar landmarks coming 
into view would cheer them. The broad road of the 
comfortable Tottenham of to-day was not broader in 1750, 
which was, I estimate, approximately the date of the great 
expedition. On the common I found two goats feeding, 
and there were surely goats in 1750. The Cross stood then 
where it now stands, albeit in the interim the renovator 
may have touched it ; and there were of yore the roadside 
trees, though not, perhaps, so severely pollarded as now. 
Where there is absolutely no change at all, save faint 
traces of affe, is in the two rows of almshouses — those of 
Nicholas Reynards, built in 1736, and those of Balthazar 
Sanchez, for eight poor men and women, built in 1600. 
Many of the square red-brick houses on each side of the 
road date from far earlier than 1750. Here, for instance, 
is one with a sundial bearing the year 1691. The inns, 
too, are in many cases merely re-faced (how much to their 
disadvantage !) but there are a few butchers' shops that 
seem to have undergone no modification. Butchers are 



MODERN TOTTENHAM 179 

under no compulsion to march with the times : civilisation 
or no civilisation, meat is meat and you must have it. 

North of Tottenham the air of prosperity disappears, 
and a suggestion of squalor is perceptible. Deserted houses 
are common, the inns are poverty-stricken, the impression 
that one is in a decaying neighbourhood is unavoidable. 
The Bell at Edmonton has now a stucco front, and if it 
were not for the fresco depicting John Gilpin at full gallop, 
one would deny that it could be the same house from 
whose balcony Mistress Gilpin watched her husband. Ed- 
monton itself is a mile farther on the road. More decay 
is here. A strip of the Wash is still left, and a butcher's 
cart splashes through it, but the low level railway passes 
over the larger portion. The Cross Keys looks hospitable, 
but the largest house in the village, once a substantial 
mansion graced with a sundial, is now surmounted by three 
brass balls. The glory of Edmonton has departed. In- 
deed, there is no more emphatic example of a decayed 
neighbourhood than this. Beautiful Georgian houses in 
their own grounds, with spreading cedars on the lawn and 
high fruit walls, can be rented at a ridiculously low rate. 
Once they were the homes of retired citizens and men 
of leisure and wealth; now they have fallen to market 
gardeners. London is like that: she has no pity, no 
sentiment, no care for the past. She will abandon and 
forget old associations instantly, at the mere sound of the 
words " convenience " and " utility " or " good form " ; she 
will create a new residential neighbourhood almost in a 
single night, and never give the old another thought. 
It having been decreed that Liverpool Street is not a 
gentleman's line — at least, that no gentleman travelling 
from it can buy a ticket for any station nearer London 
than (say) Bishop's Stortford — the decay of Edmonton 



180 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

and Enfield, Waltham Cross and neighbourhood, must 
follow. 

So much for the route. Now for my grievous discovery. 
Briefly, my grievous discovery was this — that the Wash 
is a mile farther from London than the Bell. To under- 
stand its significance we must turn to the ballad of the 
Gilpins. At present it sounds a little enough matter, and 
yet, as will be seen, the reputation of a poet is thereby 
jeopardised and another illusion threatened with extinction. 

The chaise and pair to contain Mrs. Gilpin and her three 
children and Mrs. Gilpin's sister and her child, drew up 
just three doors from John's shop, and the party took their 
seats there. It was a bright morning in the summer of 1750 
or thereabouts. Mr. Gilpin would have accompanied them, 
but he was delayed by three customers whom he valued too 
much to entrust to his apprentice. Then — after an inter- 
val, say, of half an hour, — he started too. His horse 
began by pacing slowly over the stones, but immediately 
the road became smoother he trotted, and then, thinking 
very little of his rider, broke into a gallop. Neither curb 
nor rein being of any service, Mr. Gilpin took to the mane. 
This gallop, as I understand the ballad, the horse kept up 
all the way to Edmonton and Ware and back again. But if 
John proceeded at this breakneck pace, how is it that the six 
persons in the chaise and pair reached Edmonton before him, 
and were able to watch his mad career from the balcony ? 

How was it that Mrs. Gilpin reached the Bell first ? The 
natural answer to this problem is that John Gilpin took 
a roundabout course. Indeed, we know that he passed 
through Islington, whence, presumably, the traveller to 
Edmonton would proceed by way of the Seven Sisters 
Road, or even the Essex Road, and so into Tottenham, 
which from Cheapside is less direct a course than by way 



THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE 181 

of Threadneedle Street, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Kings- 
land Road, and Stamford Hill. But Gilpin must have 
made a wider detour even than this, because, according to 
the ballad, he came to the Wash before he came to the Bell. 
This means he was approaching Edmonton from the north, 
because as the exploration of Edmonton revealed, the Wash 
is a mile farther from London than the Bell. Very well, 
then ; Mrs. Gilpin in a loaded chaise reached the Bell sooner 
than her husband on a galloping horse, for the reason that he 
chose a devious course ; and the poet's reputation is saved. 

"Let me see, how was it," now whispers the devil's 
advocate, " that John did not stop at Edmonton to dine ? " 
Because, I reply, quoting the ballad, 

"his owner had a house 
Full ten miles off at Ware." 
The horse, then, was making for his stable at Ware. But 
Ware is thirteen miles farther north than Edmonton, on 
the same road out of London. So, although horses that 
run away to their own stables usually run straight, Mr, 
Gilpin, when he passed the Bell, was riding south, full speed 
in the direction of London again. Topography is conclu- 
sive ; there is no argument against it. But, it may be 
urged, perhaps it was another Ware. That is unlikely, 
for is not the Johnny Gilpin an inn just outside the town 
to this day, and do not the people of Ware show the house 
where the Calendar dwelt, now a draper's ? These un- 
willing eyes have seen both. One word more. Edmonton 
is seven miles from London, and Ware is thirteen from 
Edmonton, twenty in all, and it is twenty miles back again. 
John Gilpin's horse, a Calendar's hack, covered the dis- 
tance at a gallop with but one halt. 

You see how much may proceed from a little. I had 
merely intended to take a walk from Cheapside to Edmon- 



18^ A WANDERER IN LONDON 

ton and think of the merry ballad of John Gilpin on the 
way. But by so doing I hit upon a great fraud, and 
Cowper, most amiable of men that ever wore a nightcap, 
stands convicted of having for upwards of a century hood- 
winked his fellows by inducing them by poetical cunning to 
believe in a ride that could never have been accomplished, 
in a route that could never be followed. Sad is it when 
faith in our household poets fails. One would begin to 
wonder if the Royal George really sank, were it not for the 
relics of it in Whitehall. William Tell was discredited 
long ago, Robin Hood is no more than a myth, Shake- 
speare is Bacon ; alas, that John Gilpin should go too ! 




02 2 

P 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE TOWER AND THE AMPHIBIANS 

Tower Hill and its victims — All Hallows, Barking — Ainsworth's 
romance — The Little Princes — St. John's Chapel — The Praise 
of Snuff — The Armouries — The Jewels — The Tower Residences 
— Jamrach's — Well-close Square — The Tower Bridge — Mr. 
Jacobs' Stories — Roofs and Chimneys — Pessimism in a Train — 
Reverence for the Law — The Ocean in Urbe — The most interest- 
ing terminus — Docks — Stepney and Limehouse — China in Lon- 
don — Canal Life — "Thank you, Driver" — An Intruder and 
the mot juste 

ON the way to the Tower from Mark Lane station one 
crosses Tower Hill — perhaps, if the traffic permits, 
walking over the very spot on which stood the old scaffold. 
When I was last there a flock of pigeons was feeding 
exactly where I judged it to have been — that scaffold on 
which so many noble heads were struck from their shoul- 
ders, from Sir Thomas More and Surrey the poet to Straf- 
ford and Algernon Sidney, and a few ignoble ones, not the 
least of which was Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat's, the last man 
to be beheaded in England, the block on which he laid his 
wicked old neck being still to be seen, full of dents, in the 
Tower itself. Standing here it is extraordinary to think 
that only 159 years have passed since it was possible to 
behead a man publicly in broad day in the middle of a 
London street. Only five generations : one's great great 
great grandfather could have seen it. 

Opposite Mark Lane Station, and at the corner of Great 

183 



184 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Tower Street, which leads into Little Tower Street, and 
that in its turn into Eastcheap and the city proper, is All 
Hallows Church, whither many of the victims of the Tower 
Hill scaffold were carried for burial, among them the Earl 
of Surrey, Bishop Fisher and Archbishop Laud. All three 
were, however, afterwards removed elsewhere, Laud, for 
example, to St. John's College, Oxford. William Penn, 
vrho lived to speak contemptuously of churches as steeple- 
houses, was baptised here in 1644, and the bloody Judge 
Jeffreys, who harried Penn's sect so mercilessly, was mar- 
ried here to his first wife in the year following the Great Fire, 
which spared All Hallows by a kind of miracle — just 
thrusting out a tongue or two to lick up the porch and 
then drawing them back. The church, though it has a 
new spire, is, within, a fine example of medieval architecture, 
and its brasses are among the best that London contains. 
Among them is one of William Thynne and his wife, 
Thynne being worthy of all commendation as the man re- 
sponsible for the first printed collection of Chaucer's 
works in 1532. 

Another interesting Great Tower Street building, or 
rather re-building, is the Czar's Head, an inn on the same 
side as the church, which stands on the site of an older inn 
of that name to which Peter the Great, when learning at 
Deptford to build ships, resorted with his friends. Mus- 
covy Court, out of Trinity Square, close by, derives its 
style from the same monarch. Little Tower Street has 
in a different way an equally unexpected association, for it 
was in a house there that James Thomson, the poet of The 
Seasons, wrote " Summer. " 

Harrison Ainsworth's romance The Tower of London, 
which I fear I should find a very tawdry work to-day, 
twenty and more years ago stirred me as few novels now 



THE TOWER 185 

are able to, and fixed the Tower for all time as a home of 
dark mystery. Not even the present smugness of its 
officialdom, the notice boards, the soldiers in its barracks, 
the dryness of its moat or the formal sixpenny tickets of 
admission, can utterly obliterate the impression of Ains- 
worth's pages and Cruikshank's mezzotints. I still expect 
to see Gog and Magog eating a mammoth pasty; I still 
look for Xit the dwarf ; and in a dark recess fancy I hear 
the shuddering sound of the headsman sharpening his axe. 
No need however for Ainsworth's fictions: — after reading 
the barest outline of English history, the Tower's stones 
run red enough. Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Lady 
Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More, the Earl of Essex — these 
are a few who were beheaded in state within its walls ; but 
what of the others who died secretly by force, hke the little 
Princes and Sir Thomas Overbury, and those other thou- 
sands of prisoners unknown who ate their hearts out in the 
cells within these nine-feet walls ? 

The ordinary tickets admit only to the jewels and the 
armour, but a written application to the Governor procures 
an authorisation to see also the dungeons, in the company 
of a warder. The room in the Bloody Tower in which the 
little Princes were smothered is no longer shown, as it has 
become part of a private dwelling; but the window is 
pointed out, and with that husk you must be satisfied. 
Among the sights to which a special order entitles you is 
the cell in which Raleigh wrote the History of the World, 
and that narrow hollow in the wall of the White Tower, 
known as Little Ease, in which Guy Fawkes was immured 
while waiting for justice and death. 

St. John's Chapel, in the White Tower, has a naked 
simpUcity beyond anything I know, and a massiveness out 
of all proportion to its size, which inspires both confidence 



186 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

and reverence. In its long life it has seen many strange 
and moving spectacles — from the all-night vigils of the 
Knights of the Bath, to Brackenbury's refusal at the altar 
side to murder the little Princes and the renunciation by 
Richard II of his crown in favour of BoUngbroke. I had 
the history of this chapel from a gentle old Irish beef-eater 
who sits in a chair and talks like a book. The names of 
monarchs and accompanying dates fell from his tongue in 
a gentle torrent until I stopped it with the question "Do 
all the warders in the Tower take snuff .? " He had never 
been asked this before, and it knocked all the literature 
and history out of him and re-established his humanity. 
He became instantly an Irishman and a brother, confessed 
to his affection for a pinch (as I had detected), and we 
discussed the merits of the habit as freely as if the royal 
body of Elizabeth of York had never lain in state within 
a few yards of us, and no printed notice had warned me 
that the place being holy I must remove my hat. 

In the Tower armouries every kind of decorative use has 
been made of old muskets, ramrods and pistols, resulting in 
ingenious mural patterns which must strike the schoolboy 
visitor as a most awful waste of desirable material. The 
armouries contain also some very real weapons indeed : to 
students of the machinery of death they are invaluable. 
The evolution of the sword and gun of all nations may be 
traced here, in glass cases which are so catholic as to con- 
tain not only the corkscrew dagger of Java but the harpoon 
gun of Nantucket. I think nothing impressed me more 
than a long and sinister catchpole — surely the most un- 
pleasant weapon that ever assailed a man's comfort and 
dignity. The models of knights in armour cannot but add 
to the vividness of Ivanhoe. Among the more recent relics 
is the uniform which the Duke of Wellington wore as the 



,^</^r 



^iTH^s' 







THE MONUMENT 



THE JEWELS 187 

Constable of the Tower, and the cloak, rolled up far too 
tightly and ?']ueezed under glass, in which Wolfe died on 
the Heights of Abraham. It should be spread out. The 
drums from Blenheim touch the imagination too. 

But the best things about the Tower are the Tower 
itself — its spaces and gateways, and old houses, and odd 
corners, and grave, hopping ravens — and St. John's 
Chapel. Interesting as the armour no doubt is, I could 
easily dispense with it, for there is something very irritating 
in being filed past policemen in the pursuit of the interest- 
ing ; and one sees better crown jewels in any pantomime. 
Of medieval gravity one never tires ; but medieval ostenta- 
tion and gaudiness soon become unendurable. Yet I sup- 
pose more people go to the Tower to see the jewels than to 
see anything else. The odd fact that the infamous but 
courageous Colonel Blood, by his historic raid on the regalia 
in 1671, rose instantly from a furtive skulking subterraneous 
existence to a place at Court and <£500 a year might have 
had the effect of multiplying such attempts ; but it does not 
seem to have done so. No one tries to steal the crown to- 
day. And yet precedent is rarely so much in the thief's 
favour. 

But the Tower as a whole — that is fine. There is a 
jumble of wooden walls and windows on one of the ram- 
parts overlooking the river, where I would gladly live, no 
matter what the duties. What are the qualifications of the 
Governor of the Tower I know not, but I am an applicant 
for the post. 

London's wild beasts, which now lend excitement to 
Regent's Park, used to be kept at the Tower, and the old 
guide books to it, a hundred and more years ago, are in- 
clined to pay more attention to them than to history. A 
living lion was more to the authors of these volumes (as to 



188 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

the sightseers also) than many dead kings. One such book 
which hes before me now, dated 1778, begins with this 
blameless proposition: "The Desire of seeing the Anti- 
quities and Rarities of our Country is allowed by all to be a 
laudable Curiosity : to point them out therefore to the In- 
quisitive, and to direct their Attention to those Things that 
best deserve Notice, cannot be denied its degree of Merit.'* 
The guide then plunges bravely into history, but quickly 
emerges to describe, with a degree of spirit rare in the 
remainder of his work, the inhabitants of the menagerie. 
The chief animals at that time were the lions Dunco, 
Pompey, Dido, Caesar, Miss Fanny, Hector, Nero, Cleony, 
and Helen, and the tigers Sir Richard, Jenny, Nancy, and 
Miss Groggery, who, " though a tigress, discovers no marks 
of ferocity." The old custom of calling the lions after the 
living monarchs of the day seems just then to have been 
in abeyance. In 1834 the menagerie was transferred to 
Regent's Park ; but I think they might have left a cage or 
two for old sake's sake. 

From the Tower, when I was there last, I walked to 
Jamrach's, down what used to be the Ratcliffe Highway, 
where De Quincey's favourite murderer Williams (who 
must, said George Dyer, have been rather an eccentric 
character) indulged in his famous holocaust a hundred 
years ago. It is now St. George's Street, and one reaches 
it by the wall of St. Katherine's Dock, through the scent of 
pepper and spice, and past the gloomy opening of Night- 
ingale Lane, which has no reference to the beautiful singing 
bird of May, but takes its name from the Knighten Guild 
founded by King Edgar in the days when London was 
Danish. 

Jamrach's is not what it was, for the wild beast trade, 
he tells me, no longer pays anyone but the Germans. 



JAMRACH'S 189 

And so the tigers and leopards and panthers and lions and 
other beautiful dangers are no more to be seen crouching in 
the recesses of his cages ; and instead I had to be satisfied 
with the company of parrots and macaws, the bul-bul of 
Persia and the mynah of India, lemurs and porcupines, 
cockatoos and blue Siberian kittens. These were in the 
shop, and in the stables were Japanese deer, and some white 
greyhounds from Afghanistan with eyes of milky blue, and 
a cage of wild turkeys. And, more interesting still, in the 
square at the back were six Iceland ponies, shaggy as a 
sheep dog and ingratiating as an Aberdeen terrier, and so 
small that they might be stabled under one's writing desk. 

On this occasion I returned to Mark Lane station from 
Jamrach's by way of Wellclose Square, which saw the birth 
of Thomas Day, the author of Sandford and Merton, and 
was the site of the Magdalen Chapel of the famous Dr. 
Dodd, who found Beauties in Shakespeare and was the 
indefatigable friend of London's unfortunates until he took 
to luxury and excesses, became a forger, and died, as we 
saw in an earlier chapter, at Tyburn Tree. The square 
was once the centre of Denmark in London and is still 
associated with the sea, a school for seamen's children 
standing where the old Danish church stood, and seamen's 
institutes abounding hereabouts. Much of the square's 
ancient character has been preserved, and on one house are 
still to be seen some very attractive bas-reliefs of children 
pursuing the arts. The rebuilder is, however, rapidly 
drawing near, and already has cleared away a large tract 
of old houses by the Mint. 

Another reminder of the sea is the Trinity House in 
Trinity Square, looking beyond the Tower to the river. 
From these offices the Brothers of the Trinity House con- 
trol our lighthouses and lightships. 



190 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Into the Mint I have never penetrated ; but the Tower 
Bridge I have cUmbed often, on clear days and misty. 
The noblest bridge I know (although its stone work is but 
veneer, and iron its heart), it is imposing however one sees 
it, broadside, or obliquely, or looking down from the Bridge 
Approach : with the roadway intact, or the bascules up to 
let a vessel through. It is the only gateway that London 
retains. 

A few years ago the district over which the Tower Bridge 
stands as a kind of sentinel, and of which the docks are the 
mainstay, had no special significance. It was merely 
largely populated by those that follow the sea or the seaman. 
But since then has come Mr. Jacobs to make it real, and 
now no one who knows his engaging stories can ever walk 
about Wapping and Shadwell, Limehouse and Rotherhithe, 
without recalling the humour of this writer. It is a high 
comphment to a novelist and an indication of his triumph 
when we can say that he has created a new world, although 
from the circumstance that we say it only of the comic nov- 
elists, it has, I suppose, also a suggestion of limitation. A 
novelist whose characters for the most part behave like real 
people escapes the compliment: their world is also ours. 
We do not talk of Thackeray's world, of George Eliot's 
world. But we talk often of Dickens' world, which means 
that Dickens' love of eccentricity so impregnated his char- 
acters as to give them all a suspicion of family resemblance, 
branding them of his world rather more perhaps than of 
ours. Mr. Jacobs also thus stamps his seafaring men, so 
that we are coming to talk of the Jacobs' world too. Not 
that he — or not that Dickens — is false to life, but that 
both, liking people to be as they like them, tone up life a 
little to please their own sense of fun. It is one of the 
differences between the realist and the romancist that the 



THE JACOBS' WORLD 191 

romancist wants to give himself pleasure as well as his 
reader. The realist is more concerned to do only his duty. 

I wish that one might enter the Jacobs' world now and 
then instead of going to Switzerland or Scotland or the 
other dull countries where one makes formal holiday. But 
I fear it is not to be : I fear that the difference between 
fact and Mr. Jacobs' presentation of it will never be 
bridged. I have wandered much and listened much in 
Wapping and Rotherhithe, but have heard no admirable 
sarcasms, have met no skippers obviously disguised as 
women. I have listened to night-watchmen, but they have 
told me no tales like " The Money Box" or " Bill's Lapse." 
A lighterman at Rotherhithe (on the green balcony of the 
Angel) once told me a good story, but it is quite unfit for 
print and belongs peculiarly and painfully to our own world. 
I have heard the captains of barges and wherries exchanging 
repartees, but they were for the most part merely beastly. 
It is sad but true: the Jacobs' world is not accessible. 
Even if one followed Mr. Jacobs about, I doubt whether 
one would come to it : none the less may one live in hope 
as one wanders among the wharves and streets of this 
amphibious district. 

If one would explore it with any thoroughness one must 
walk from the Tower to the East India Docks: it is all 
there. But the quickest way to the East India Docks is to 
take the train from Fenchurch Street — that almost secret 
city terminus — to Blackwall. 

If one were to ask a hundred people to name London's 
most interesting railway terminus, some would choose 
Charing Cross, some Waterloo, some Euston, some Pad- 
dington, and so forth. Not one would say Blackwall ; and 
yet in its way Blackwall is more interesting than any of these 
others. It is at the end of one of the short grimy lines 



192 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

from Fenchurch Street, through Stepney and Poplar: 
one of the lines which carry you on a raised rail level with 
the chimneys of small houses, all alike apparently for ever 
and ever, broken only by a factory chimney, or a three- 
master, or the glimmering spire of a white stone church. It 
is these miles of chimneys which keep me out of East Lon- 
don and South London, so oppressive are they, so desolat- 
ing, so fatal to any idealistic view of humanity. Doomed 
to live in such squalor, such deserts of undersized similar 
houses, so that the identification of one's home becomes 
more wonderful than a bird's identification of its nest, how 
can we, one asks oneself, be anything but larger ants ? 
What future is there for such groundlings ? Is it not 
monstrous that our chances of eternity should be deter- 
mined by conduct in an infinitesimal span of years under 
conditions such as these — with poverty and dirt and fog 
thrust on us from our birth — not our own poverty and 
dirt, but so powerful as to resist all efforts ? 

One has the same gloomy atheistic oppression as one 
comes into London on the South-Eastern, and in fact on 
every line where the carriage window is above these squalid 
London roofs and chimneys. One gets it again on the 
top of the Monument or St. Paul's or the tower of the 
new Roman Catholic cathedral at Westminster, looking 
down at the ceaseless activities of what surely must be 
insects — so busy about trifles or nothing at all, so near the 
ground, so near annihilation. 

In a lighter mood I have sometimes as I looked out of 
the window of a railway carriage in the country allowed 
myself to dwell on the thought that there is not a square 
inch of this green England through which we are passing 
but possesses title-deeds reposing in some lawyer's safe. 
The same thought if indulged in one of these London 




CORNELIUS VAN DER GEEST 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY VAN DYCK IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



SOUTH-EASTERN STANZAS 193 

trains, cannot but land one in a feeling for the law which, 
beginning with something like respect, must culminate in 
reverence. Everything belongs to someone — that is the 
truism which finally emerges. In the country, where there 
are unfenced heaths and hills and commons, one can forget 
it ; but never in a city, where for every open space a code 
of regulations must be drawn up and displayed, and where 
every house in a small terrace may have a different owner. 
A further reflection is that although the lawyers may not 
inherit the earth (indeed they are expressly excluded by 
the beatitude), they will at any rate be indispensable at the 
negotiations. 

To come into London between the roofs of Bermondsey 
on the South-Eastern, as I do very often, has, however, its 
compensations : for in the distance the shipping is always 
to be seen to carry one's thoughts afar. It was on one 
occasion, when this scene was new to me, that I found my- 
self composing these stanzas : — 

Between New Cross and London Bridge, 
I peered from a third-class " smoker," 

Over the grimy chimney pots 
Into the yellow ochre. 

When lo ! in a sudden lift of the fog 

Up rose a brave three-master 
With brand-new canvas on every spar 

As fair as alabaster. 

And, gazing on that gallant sight. 

In a moment's space, or sooner. 
The smoke gave place to a southern breeze, 

The train to a bounding schooner. 



194 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Again the vessel stood to sea, 

Majestic, snowy-breasted ; 
Again great ships rode nobly by, 

On purple waves foam-crested. 

Again we passed mysterious coasts, 

Again soft nights enwound us; 
Again the rising sun revealed 

Strange fishermen around us. 

The spray was salt, the air was glad — 

When — bump — ! we reached the station : 

But what did I care though fog was there. 
With this for compensation ? 

The interest of Blackwall station is its unique and ro- 
mantic situation hard by the north bank of the Thames. 
You get into the train at Fenchurch Street, and in the 
company of shipping agents and mates, ships-chandlers and 
stewards, emigrants and engineers, you travel through the 
chimney pots and grime of London at its grimiest to this 
ugly station. And suddenly, having given up your ticket, 
you pass through a door and are in the open world and a 
fresh breeze, with the river at your very feet — a wherry or 
two beating up against the wind, a tug dragging out a 
schooner, and a great steamer from Hong Kong looking 
for her berth ! It is the completest change, and on a fine 
day the most exhilarating. 

And of all London termini Blackwall is most emphati- 
cally a terminus, for another yard and your train would be 
at the bottom of the East India Docks. 

Docks are docks all the world over, and there is little 
to say of the East India Docks that could not be said of 
the docks at Barry in Wales, at Antwerp or Hamburg. 



THE CHINESE STREET 195 

One is everywhere confronted by the same miracles of 
berthing and extrication. Perhaps at the East India 
Docks the miracles are more miraculous, for the leviathans 
of Donald Currie which lie here are so huge, the water- 
ways and gates so narrow. 

The last time I was there I returned on foot — down 
the East India Docks Road, through Poplar and Lime- 
house and Stepney : past hospitals and sailors' homes and 
Radical Clubs, and here and there a grave white church, 
and here and there, just off the main thoroughfare, a 
Board School with the side street full of children; and 
public houses uncountable, and foreign men on the pave- 
ment. 

Just by Jack's Palace, which is the newest of the sailors' 
homes, at the corner of the West India Docks Road, I 
met a httle band of five Chinese sailors in dirty blue linen. 
They were making, I suppose, for Limehouse Court, — an 
odd little street which is given up to lodging houses and 
grocers' shops kept by silent discreet Chinese who have 
married English women and settled down in London. 
They stand at their doors, these stolid Celestials, beneath 
their Chinese signs, for anyone to see, and are, I am told, 
among the best citizens of the East End and the kindest 
husbands. 

A little west of Jack's Palace one ought to turn off to 
the south just to see the barges in Limehouse Basin, 
because it is here that they enter the river from Regent's 
Canal, that sluggish muddy waterway upon which one is 
always coming unexpectedly in the north-west district of 
London, and by which, if one were so minded, one could 
get right away into the heart of green England. Very 
stealthily it finds its slow and silent way about London, 
sometimes underground for quite long distances, as at 



196 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Islington, where the barges are pulled through by a steel 
hawser — almost scraping the sides and the roof as they 
go. By Regent's Park and at Paddington you may see 
boys angling from the tow-path; but no one ever saw 
them land a fish. I have long intended one day to strike a 
bargain with a bargee and become his shipmate for a while 
and see a little of England in this way ; but somehow the 
opportunity never comes. Yet it should, for outside the 
city — at Hemel Hempsted or Berkhampsted for example 
— these craft are gay and smiling as any in Holland, and 
the banks are never dull. 

At the hospital just opposite the entrance to the East 
India Docks and the Blackwall Tunnel — that curious 
subterranean and subaqueous roadway beneath the 
Thames, through which one may ride on the top of an om- 
nibus, as one rides beneath Kingsway in a tram — notice 
boards are set up asking the drivers, for the sake of those 
that are ill within, to walk their horses past the building. 
That is a common enough request, but what gives it a 
peculiar interest here is that the carter having complied 
(or not) with the modest demand, is confronted at the 
end of the facade by another board saying " Thank you, 
driver." 

In this and other of the poorer quarters of London, 
where everyone else is engaged in the struggle for life, one 
feels a little that it is an impertinence to be inquisitively 
wandering at all: that one has no right here unless one 
is part of the same machine. A little bold Jewess, aged 
nine or thereabouts, on her way home from school, seemed 
to share this view, for she looked at me with impudently 
scrutinising eyes (not ceasing the while to scratch her leg), 
and then shouted something which I failed to understand 
but which her companions enjoyed to the full. It was 



A CRITIC 197 

an epithet of scorn, I am sure, and it seemed to challenge 
my right to be there, doing nothing but examining the 
fauna of the district for superior literary purposes. And 
I quite agreed with her, I left her still scratching her 
leg, the triumphant heroine of her circle, the satisfied 
author of the mot juste. 



CHAPTER XIV 

WHITECHAPEL AND THE BORO' 

East of Bishopsgate — A new London and a new People — Love and 
Death — A Little Tragedy — The Female Lightning Extractor — 
A broad and vivid Road — The Trinity Almshouses — Epping 
Forest — Victoria Park — The Sand-bank and the People's Palace — 
The Ghetto — Norton Folgate — The Book Stalls of London — 
The Paris Quais — Over London Bridge — St. Saviour's — Two 
Epitaphs — Debtors* Prisons — Dickens and Chaucer — Guy's 
Hospital 

LONDON east of Bishopsgate Street is another city 
altogether. It leads its own life, quite independent 
of the west, has its own social grades, its own pleasures, its 
own customs and code of morality, its own ambitions, its 
own theatres and music halls, its own smart set. The 
West End is in the habit of pitying the East: but the 
young bloods of the Mile End Road, which is at once the 
Bond Street, Strand and Piccadilly of this city, have as 
much reason to pity the West End. Life goes quite as 
merrily here: indeed, more so. There is a Continental 
bustle in this fine road — a finer, freer road than the rest of 
London can boast — and an infinitely truer feeling of 
friendliness. People know each other here. Friends on 
'buses whistle to friends on the pavements. Talkative 
foreigners lend cheerfulness and picturesqueness. In the 
summer the fruit stalls are almost continuous — in early 
autumn purple with grapes. Nowhere else in London, in 
England is fruit so eaten. Sunday here is no day of 

198 



FUNEREAL POMP 199 

gloom : to a large part of the population it is shopping day, 
to a large part it is the only holiday. 

There is no call to pity the Mile End Road or White- 
chapel High Street. It is they rather than Bloomsbury 
and Bayswater that have solved the problem of how to live 
in London. If the art of life is, as I beheve, largely the 
suppression of self-consciousness, these people are artists. 
They are as frank and unconcerned in their courtships as 
the West Enders are in their shopping. They will embrace 
on the top of a 'bus : anywhere. The last summer evening 
I was in the Mile End Road Cupid was terrifically busy. 

But the last winter day I was there, I remember, it was 
the other end of life that was more noticeable ; for funeral 
after funeral went by, all very ostentatious and all at the 
trot. Most of them were babies' funerals : one carriage 
only, with the poor little cofl5n under the box seat, and the 
driver and bearer in white hat bands ; but one was imposing 
indeed, with a glass hearse under bushes of plumes — an 
ostrich-feather shrubbery, a splendid coffin snowed under 
jflowers, half a dozen mourning coaches filled with men and 
women in the blackest of black, three four-wheelers, a 
hansom or so, two crowded wagonettes of the kind that 
hcensed victuallers own and drive on Sundays, and a market 
cart packed with what seemed to be porters from Spital- 
fields market. I guessed the deceased to have been a fruit 
salesman. He was going home well, as those that die in 
the East End always do. No expense is spared then. 

These many babies' funerals reminded me vividly of my 
first visit to the East End twelve or thirteen years ago. A 
girl of sixteen, a hand in an umbrella shop, unmarried, had 
become a mother, and her baby had died under suspicious 
circumstances. The case was in the papers, and a humani- 
tarian friend of mine who was not well enough to go herself 



200 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

asked me to try and see the girl or her people and find out 
if she needed any help. So I went. The address was a 
house in one of the squalid streets off the Commercial Road, 
and when I called the landlady said that the girl was at 
work again and would not be in for two hours. These 
hours I spent roaming the neighbourhood, for some time 
fascinated by the despatch, the cleverness, and the want of 
principle of a woman who sold patent medicines from a 
wagonette, and pulled out teeth for nothing by way of 
advertisement. Tooth after tooth she snatched from the 
bleeding jaws of the Commercial Road, beneath a naphtha 
lamp, talking the while with that high-pitched assurance 
which belongs to women who have a genius for business, 
and selling pain-killers and pills by the score between the 
extractions. 

After a while I went back to the house and found the 
little wan mother, a wistful but wholly independent child, 
who was already perplexed enough by offers of help from 
kindly aliens in that other London (to say nothing of local 
missionaries), but had determined to resume her own life as 
if nothing had happened. And so I came away, but not 
before her landlord had pitched a tale of his own embarrass- 
ments that far transcended, to his mind, any difiiculty that 
the girl might be in. And then I rode back to London on 
a 'bus, behind a second engineer who was taking a Lime- 
house barmaid to the Tivoli. 

I believe that an observant loiterer in the Mile End Road 
would bring away a richer harvest than from any street in 
London. There seems to me always to be light there, and 
it is so wide and open that one's eyes are not worried and 
perplexed. Here also, and in its continuations, the White- 
chapel High Street and Aldgate, one can reconstruct the 
past almost more easily than anywhere in London. There 




THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, AVITH ST. JEROME AND ST. DOMINIC 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY FILIPPINO LIPPI IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



ALMSHOUSES 201 

are fewer changes; the width of the road has not been 
tampered with; some of the inns still retain their sign 
posts with a swinging sign ; and many old houses remain — 
such as those in Butchers' Row in Aldgate, one of the most 
attractive collections of seventeenth-century faQades that 
have been left. There is something very primitive and old- 
English in the shops too, not only of the butchers, but the 
ancient wine merchant's in the midst of them, whose old 
whisky is very warming to the dealers who assemble for the 
hay market in the middle of the road, just above here, three 
mornings a week. 

But the architectural jewel of the Mile End Road is the 
Trinity Almshouses — a quiet square of snug little residences 
dating from the seventeenth century, for old men who have 
been mariners, and old women who are mariners' widows 
or daughters — sixty and more of them. In the midst is 
a grass plot, and at the end a chapel, and the Governor's 
house is by one gate and the Reading Room by the other. 
Home is the sailor, home from the sea, in this still back- 
water ; and here he smokes and gossips till the end, within 
sound of the roar not of his ancient element but of humanity. 

On a fine Sunday afternoon in summer the Mile End is 
crowded with vehicles — dog-carts, wagonettes, donkey- 
carts, every kind of democratic carriage, on its way to Wan- 
stead and Epping and the River Lea, which is East London's 
don's Jordan. Epping Forest is out of the scheme of this 
book, or I could write of it with some fervour: of its fine 
seclusion and its open air, its thickets of hornbeam and 
groves of beech, its gorse and rivulets, its protected birds 
and deer, its determined roads and shy footpaths, and its 
occasional straggling Georgian towns with Victorian trim- 
mings and far too many inns. The Forest, although motor 
cars rush through it, is properly the last stronghold of the 



202 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

gig; the bicycle also, which is fast disappearing from pa- 
trician roads, may still be counted in its thousands here. 
Epping Forest knows nothing of progress: with perfect 
content and self-satisfaction it hugs the past and will hug it. 
It is still almost of the days of Pickwick, certainly not more 
recent than Leech. 

The Sunday gigs and wagonettes, the donkey-carts and 
bicycles are, as I say, on their way to Epping and the 
open country: the trams and omnibuses are packed with 
people bound for one of the cemeteries or Victoria Park. 
This park, which lies between Hackney and Bethnal 
Green, is a park indeed : an open space that is really used 
and wanted, in a way that Hyde Park and Regent's Park 
and St. James's Park are not wanted. London in its 
western districts would still have air without them; but 
Hackney and Bethnal Green would have nothing were it 
not for Victoria Park. Battersea Park is made to do its 
work with some thoroughness; but it is a mere desolate 
unpeopled waste compared with Victoria Park. Whether 
the sand-bank which a few years ago was placed there for 
children to dig in, still remains, I know not; but when I 
was there last in warm weather, a few summers since, it was 
more populous than an ant hill and the most successful 
practical amelioration of a hard lot that had been known 
— in a district which had just seen the total failure of the 
People's Palace, that huge building in the Mile End Road 
that was to civilise and refine this wonderful East End 
nation, but which all too soon declined into a college and 
a desert. I sometimes doubt indeed if it is not the Mile 
End Road's destiny to civilise the rest of London. As I 
have said, these people lead far more genuine and sensible 
lives — and to do that, though it may not be all civilisation, 
is a long way towards it. 



JEWRY 203 

There is no difficulty in naming the prevailing type in 
Aldgate and Whitechapel High Street — olive skin, dark 
hair, hook nose. Here the Jews predominate. But if you 
would see them in their masses, unleavened by Christian, 
go to Middlesex Street (which used to be called Petticoat 
Lane) on Sunday, or Wentworth Street any day except 
Saturday. Wentworth Street is almost impassable for its 
stalls and chaff erers. Save for its grime, it is impossible to 
believe it in England and within a few minutes of the 
Bank. The faces are foreign; the clothes are foreign, 
nearly all the women being wrapped in dark red shawls; 
the language is largely foreign, Yiddish being generally 
known here; and many of the articles on the stalls are 
foreign — from pickled fish and gherkins to scarfs of bril- 
liant hue. Most of the Jews one sees hereabouts have some 
connection with the old clothes trade, the central exchange 
of which is just off Houndsditch — in Phil's Buildings — for 
the right to enter which you pay a penny, and once inside 
would gladly pay five shillings to be let out. Yet I suppose 
there are people who take season tickets. 

Norton Folgate and Shoreditch are very different from 
Whitechapel High Street and the Mile End Road. They 
are quieter and much narrower. But they too have their 
old houses, and a chemist at a corner, I notice, still retains 
his old sign of a Golden Key. The London streets in the 
days of the hanging signs and gables must have been very 
picturesque. One does not see that we have gained any- 
thing to compensate for their loss — electric light and roll 
shutters do not count at all in the balance. Spital Square, 
off Norton Folgate, has been Httle impaired by the re- 
builder, and some of its Georgian doors might open at any 
moment, one feels, to allow a silk merchant in knee breeches 
to step forth. 



204 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Shoreditch, like Aldgate High Street, has its stalls: 
many for whelks and oysters, which are steadily patronised, 
quite as a matter of course, all day long, and a few for old 
books. I bought for threepence when I was there last a 
very unprincipled satire in verse on poor Caroline of Bruns- 
wick, entitled Messalina; a work on Female Accomplish- 
ment (as much unlike the other as a book could be) ; and 
Little Henry and His Bearer. The Aldgate stalls are fa- 
mous for the bargains one may find there ; but one must 
look long under unfavourable conditions, and I have had no 
luck. The Farringdon Street stalls have served me better. 
London having no quays, as Paris has, it is here and to the 
Charing Cross Road that one must go for old books — to 
Aldgate and Farringdon Street in particular. I wonder 
that the West End has no street of stalls where one might 
turn over books and prints. 

The Embankment, since it leads nowhere, is utterly 
neglected. The Londoner hates to be out of the swim, 
and therefore he would rather be jostled in Parliament 
Street and Whitehall, the Strand and Fleet Street, on his 
way to Blackfriars from Westminster, than walk direct but 
unaccompanied beside the river. Hence a mile of good 
broad coping on the Embankment wall is unused, where in 
Paris it would be bright with trays of books and prints 
and curiosities. 

It is at Aldgate that on the east the city proper ends ; 
but although the pump still stands, the gate is no more. 
Chaucer was once the tenant of the dwelling-house over 
the gate and, being a wine-merchant, of the cellars beneath 
it. Mention of the poet reminds me that we have not yet 
been to the Borough to see the Tabard ; and this is a good 
opportunity — by 'bus to London Bridge. Not the Lon- 
don Bridge of the old prints, with its houses and shops 



LONDON BRIDGE 205 

massed higher and thicker than any on Firenze's Ponte 
Vecchia, but the very utihtarian structure that ousted it 
eighty years ago. 

London Bridge is the highest point to which great vessels 
can come : beyond are only tugs and such minor craft as 
can lower their funnels or masts and so creep beneath the 
arches. It has always typified London's business to me, 
because when I used as a child to come to town on my way 
to school, we came to London Bridge station, and the first 
great excitement was to cross the river here : the second, to 
lunch at Crosby Hall amid Tudor trappings. I still always 
loiter on London Bridge — looking over at the busthng 
stevedores and listening to the donkey engines and the 
cranes. From this point the Tower Bridge is the gate of 
London indeed, and the Tower indescribably solemn and 
medieval. St. Dunstan's-in-the-East hangs in the sky, a 
fairy spire, the only white and radiant thing amid the dun 
and grey. 

St. Saviour's, which is now grandly known as Southwark 
Cathedral, is architecture of a different type, but it is 
beautiful too and sits as comfortably as any brooding hen. 
It is interesting both in its old parts and its new — very 
new indeed, but harmonious, and carefully reproducing 
what has been lost. In the vestry you may still see a 
Norman arch or two from the twelfth century. After a 
fire in the thirteenth century it was built again ; and again 
and again since has it been enlarged and repaired. But it 
should now rest awhile, secure from masons. Be sure to 
ask the verger for the story of St. Mary Overy, who founded 
the priory of which this is the church: he tells it better 
than I could, and believes it too. He will also give you 
some interesting views on American glass as you stand 
before the window presented by Harvard University, and 



206 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

will recite epitaphs to you, with much taste and feeling, in- 
cluding the lines on the World's Nonsuch, a beautiful and 
holy virgin of fourteen. Among these epitaphs is one upon 
Lockyer, the Cockle and HoUoway, Beecham and Carter, of 
his time — the middle of the seventeenth century : — 

His Virtues and his Pith are so well known 
That Envy can't confine them under stone. 
But they'll survive his dust and not expire 
Till all things else at th' Universal Fire. 

Yet where are the pills of Lockyer ? Where are the galleons 
of Spain ? Of another worthy parishioner, Garrard a 
grocer, it was written : — 

Weep not for him, since he is gone before 

To Heaven, where Grocers there are many more. 

The church has old tombs and new windows, those in the 
new nave being very happily chosen and designed : one to 
Shakespeare, for his connection with Bankside and its 
Theatres ; one to Massinger, who is buried here ; one to 
John Fletcher, who is buried here too; one to Alleyn the 
actor ; one to Gower, the Father of English Poetry, who is 
buried here and founded a chantry; one to Chaucer, who 
sent forth his pilgrims from the Tabard hard by ; and one 
to Bunyan, erected with pennies subscribed by Southwark 
children. Although the church is so lenient to literature 
and the stage, no hero from the neighbouring bear-pit and 
bull-baiting arena is celebrated here. 

The Tabard to-day is just a new inn on the site of the 
old and is not interesting; but there is an inn close to it, 
a few yards north, on the east side of the High Street, 
which preserves more of old coaching London than any 
that is now left, and is, I think, the only one remaining that 
keeps its galleries. I mean the George. When I came to 




MERCURY INSTRUCTING CUPID 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY CORREGGIO IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



THE DEBTORS 207 

London the White Hart, a httle to the north of this, still 
retained its yard and galleries — just as in the days when 
Samuel Weller was the boots here and first met Mr. Pick- 
wick on his way to catch Jingle and Miss Wardle. So did 
the Bull and the Bell in Holborn. But these have all been 
renewed or removed, and the George is now alone. It 
stands in its yard, painted a cheerful colour, and the coffee 
room has a hot fire and high-backed bays to sit in, and the 
bar is a paradise of bottles. Surely the spirit of Dickens, 
who so loved the Borough, broods here. Surely the ghosts 
of Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen drop in now and then from 
Lant Street, and it is not too far for Mr. Micawber's genial 
spook to send for a bottle of something encouraging, from 
the King's Bench prison. 

A few other old houses remain in the High Street — the 
Half Moon, with its flying bridge and old world stables, 
and No. 152, with a window standing out as in the old 
London prints ; and one generally has the feeling that one 
is in a London of a many years' earlier date than that across 
London Bridge. Perhaps it is beer that keeps progress in 
check, for the hop merchants congregate here. 

The church of St. George the Martyr — brick and stone 
(you see the spire in Hogarth's " Southwark Fair ") — 
brings other memories of Dickens, for it was in the vestry 
here that little Dorrit slept, while the prisoners who died in 
the Marshalsea and King's Bench prison lie in its burial 
ground, now partly built over. The King's Bench prison, 
which existed so largely for debtors, had many illustrious 
visitors besides Mr. Micawber, sent thither not only by the 
eternal want of pence but also for some of the more positive 
offences. Among them was John Wilkes (for Hbel), 
Haydon, who painted his " Mock Election " here, William 
Combe, who wrote Syntax's tours here, and William Hone, 



208 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

who edited his Table Book while in captivity. Hone was 
not in the prison but in its " rules " — which included 
several streets round about, but no public house and no 
theatre. Alleviations were however found. The Dorrit 
family were in the Marshalsea, which adjoined the King's 
Bench and had, like all the debtors' prisons, a skittle alley 
in which the gentlemen might, in Dickens' phrase, "bowl 
down their troubles." If you walk into Leyton's Buildings, 
which is very old and picturesque and has a noble timber 
yard at the end of it, you will be within this prison area. 
The Marshalsea not only harboured gentlemen who could 
not meet their bills, but had a compound for smugglers also. 
Nearly three hundred years ago some of the sweetest notes 
that ever struck a bliss upon the air of a prison cell rose 
from the Marshalsea, for here George Wither wrote his 
"Shepherd's Hunting." 

One should certainly walk up St. Thomas's Street, if 
only to see the doorway of the house to the east of the 
Chapter House, and also to peep into Guy's, so venerable 
and staid and useful, and so populous with students and 
nurses, all wearing that air of resolute and assertive good 
health — more, of immortality — that always seems to 
belong to the officers of a hospital. And yet — and yet — 
John Keats was once a student at this very institution ! 



CHAPTER XV 

HOLBORN AND BLOOMSBURY 

The changing seasons — London at her best — Signs of Winter — True 
Londoners — Staple Inn — Ely Place — Gray's Inn — Lord Bacon 
— Dr. Johnson and the Bookseller — Bedford Row — The Found- 
ling Hospital — Sunday Services — Culture and Advanced Theol- 
ogy — The Third Commandment — Queen Square — Edward 
Irving — Lord Thurlow — Red Lion Square and the Painters — 
St. George's and the Brewer — St. Giles' — Bloomsbury — Gower 
Street and the Wall Fruit — Egypt and Greece in London 

I HAVE so often by a curious chance been in Holborn 
on those days in February and October when the 
certainty of spring and winter suddenly makes itself felt 
that I have come to associate the changing seasons in- 
separably with that road. One can be very conscious 
there of the approach of spring, very sure that the reign 
of winter is at hand. Why, I do not know, unless it is 
that being wide and on high ground Holborn gives the 
Londoner more than his share of sky, and where else 
should we look for portents ? 

I must confess to becoming very restless in London in 
the early spring. As one hurries over the asphalt the 
thought of primroses is intolerable. And London has a 
way of driving home one's losses by its many flower-sellers 
and by the crocuses and daffodils in the parks. But later 
— after the first rapture is over and the primroses no 

longer have to be sought but thrust themselves upon one 
p 209 



210 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

— I can remain in London with more composure and wait 
for the hot weather. London to my mind has four periods 
when she is more than tolerable, when she is the most 
desirable abode of all. These are May, when the freshness 
of the leaves and the clarity of the atmosphere unite to 
lend her an almost Continental brightness and charm; 
August at night; November at dusk when the presages 
of winter are in the air ; and the few days before Christmas, 
when a good-natured bustle and an electric excitement 
and anticipation fill the streets. Were I my own master 
(or what is called one's own master) I would leave London 
immediately after Christmas and never set foot in her 
precincts again till the first match at Lord's; and soon 
after that I would be off again. 

But November would see me back ; for although London 
beneath a May sun is London at her loveliest, it is when 
the signs of winter begin to accumulate that to me she 
is most friendly, most homely. I admire her in May, but 
I am quite ready to leave her: in November I am glad 
that I shall not be going away for a long time. She as- 
sumes the winter garb so cheerfully and naturally. With 
the first fog of November she begins to be happy. " Now," 
one seems to hear her say, "now I am myself again. 
Summer was all very well, but clear air and warmth are 
not really in my line. I am a grey city and a dingy: 
smoke is the breath of my life: stir your fires and let us 
be comfortable and gloomy again." In the old days one 
of the surest signs of winter in London was straw in the 
'buses ; but there is not much of it now. The chestnut 
roasters, however, remain : still as certain harbingers of the 
winter as the swallows are of the summer. At the street 
corners you see their merry little furnaces glowing through 
the peep-holes, and if you will, and are not ashamed, you 



SIGNS OF WINTER 211 

may fill your pockets with two-pennyworth, and thus, at 
a ridiculously small expenditure, provide yourself with 
food and hand- warmers in one. A foreign chestnut- 
vender whom I saw the other day in the Strand kept 
supplies both of roast chestnuts and ice-cream on the 
same barrow, so that his patrons by purchasing of each 
could, alternately eating and licking, transport them- 
selves to July or December, Spitzbergen or Sierra Leone. 
The hot-potato men are perennials, although perhaps they 
ply their business with less assiduity in summer than 
winter. I hke best those over whose furnace is an arch 
of spikes, each one impaling a Magnum Bonum — like the 
heads that used to ornament Temple Bar. (" Behold the 
head of a tater," as a witty lady once remarked.) The 
sparrows now are thought tamer than in summer, and 
the pigeons would be so if that were possible. The chairs 
have all gone from the parks. 

From the fact that I have already confessed to a desire to 
leave London for quite long periods, and from the confes- 
sion which I now make that few pleasures in life seem to 
me to surpass the feeling of repose and anticipation and 
liberty that comes to one as one leans back in the carriage 
of an express train steaming steadily and noiselessly out of 
one of the great London stations, the deduction is easy that 
I am but an indifferent Londoner. With the best inten- 
tions in the world I cannot have deceived any reader into 
thinking me a good one. I am too critical: the true 
Londoner loves his city not only passionately but indis- 
criminately. She is all in all to him. He loves every 
aspect of her, every particular, because all go to the com- 
pletion of his ideal, his mistress. None the less (although 
I suggest that my travels would assist in disqualifying me), 
his love does not prevent him from leaving her: you meet 



212 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

true Londoners all over the world ; indeed, it is abroad that 
you find them most articulate, for the London tendency to 
ridicule emotion and abbreviate displays of sentiment (ex- 
cept on the melodramatic stage) prevents them at home 
from showing their love as freely as they can do abroad. 
At home they are sardonic, suspicious, chary of praise ; but 
in the lonely places of the earth and in times of depression 
all the Londoner comes out. 

Everyone knows how Private Ortheris, in Mr. Kipling's 
story, went mad in the heat of India and babbled not of 
green fields but of the Strand and the Adelphi arches, 
orange peel, wet pavements and flaring gas jets ; and on 
the day on which I am writing these words I find in a 
paper a quotation from an article in a medical magazine, by 
the lady superintendent of a country sanitorium for con- 
sumptives, who says that once having a patient who was 
unmistakably dying, and having written to his friends to 
receive him again, they replied that his home off the Euston 
Road was so wretched that they hoped she could keep 
him ; which she would have done but for the man himself, 
who implored her to send him back " where he could hear 
once more the 'buses in the Euston Road." There, in 
these two men, one in India and one dying in East Anglia, 
speaks the true Londoner. No transitory visitor to the 
city can ever acquire this love ; I doubt if anyone can who 
did not spend his childhood in it. 

The Londoner speaking here is the real thing : the home- 
sickness which he feels is not to be counterfeited. It is not 
the saddest part of the latter days of Charles Lamb that he 
was doomed to Enfield and Edmonton, and that when he 
did get to London now and then it was peopled by ghosts 
and knew him not. No wonder he shed tears to find that 
St. Dunstan's iron figures — the wonders of his infancy, as 




STAPLE INN 



MISLEADING GABLES 213 

those in Cheapside have been the wonders of ours — had 
vanished. This is the real love of London, which I for one 
cannot pretend to, much as I should value it. London is 
neither my mother nor my step-mother; but I love her 
always a little, and now and then well on the other side of 
idolatry. 

There is that other type of Londoner, too, that is in love 
not with its sights and savours but with its intellectual 
variety — a type fixed for me in an elderly man of letters of 
considerable renown, the friend of some of the rarest spirits 
in modern life, whom when, almost a boy, I was for the first 
time in his company, I heard say that he " dared not leave 
London for fear some new and interesting figure should 
arrive during his absence and be missed by him." That 
speaker was a true Londoner too. 

Meanwhile what of Holborn and Bloomsbury ? 

Holborn is chiefly remarkable for that row of old houses 
opposite Gray's Inn Road which give so false an impres- 
sion of this city to visitors who enter it at Euston or St. Pan- 
eras or King's Cross, and speeding down the Gray's Inn 
Road in their hansoms, see this wonderful piece of medieval- 
ism before them. " Is London like that ? " they say ; and 
prepare for pleasures that will not be fulfilled. The houses, 
which are piously preserved by the Prudential directors, 
form the north side of Staple Inn, one of the quietest and 
most charming of the small Inns of Court, with trees full of 
sparrows, whose clamour towards evening is incredibly as- 
sertive, and a beautiful little hall. It is all very old and 
rather crazy, and it would be well for us now to see it as 
often as we can, lest its knell suddenly sound and we have 
not the chance again. Something of the same effect of 
quietude is to be obtained in the precincts of the Mercers' 
School, a little to the east, especially in the outer court; 



^14 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

but this is a very minute backwater. For quietude with 
space you must seek Gray's Inn. 

But before exploring Gray's Inn one might look into 
Ely Place on the other side of the road, at the beginning 
of Charterhouse Street, for it is old and historic, marking 
the site of the palace where John of Gaunt died. Sir 
Christopher Hatton, who danced before Elizabeth, secured 
a part of the building and made himself a spacious home 
there, a tenancy still commemorated by Hatton Garden, 
close by, where the diamond merchants have their mart. 
Ely Place, as it now stands, was built at the end of the 
eighteenth century, but the chapel of the ancient palace 
still remains, and has passed to the Roman Catholics, who 
have made it beautiful. The crypt is one of the quietest 
sanctuaries in London. 

Gray's Inn has let the rebuilder in here and there, but 
he has been well watched, and in a very little time, under 
London's grimy influence, his work will fall into line with 
the Inn's prevailing style. The large Square is still the 
serene abode of antiquity — not too remote, but sufficiently 
so for peace. The most illustrious of Gray's Inn's members 
is Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, who acted as its treasurer 
and kept his rooms here to the end. He identified himself 
with all the activities of the Inn, grave and gay, and helped 
in laying out its gardens. To meditate upon the great 
Chancellor most fittingly one must saunter at evening in 
Gray's Inn Walk, beneath the trees, the descendants of 
those which he planted with his own hand. It was here 
perhaps that his own sage and melodious thoughts on 
gardens came to him. 

Among Gray's Inn's other illustrious residents for long or 
short periods were Ritson the antiquary and vegetarian, 
Oliver Goldsmith, Southey and Macaulay. It was behind 



BEDFORD ROW 215 

Gray's Inn that Mr. Justice Shallow fought with Sampson 
Stockfish, a fruiterer. Tonson, the publisher and book- 
seller, had his shop by Gray's Inn Gate in Holborn before 
he moved to the Shakespeare's Head in the Strand. 
Osborne, the bookseller of "impassive dulness," and "en- 
tirely destitute of shame," whom Dr. Johnson knocked 
down, had his shop here too. The story goes that the 
Great Lexicographer there floored him with a folio and set 
his learned foot upon his neck ; but this, it is sad to relate, 
was not so. "Sir, he was impertinent to me and I beat 
him. But it was not in his shop: it was in my own 
chambers " — that is the true version. Booksellers (per- 
haps from fear) have rather abandoned this neighbourhood 
now, although there are a few in the little alleys about — 
in Red Lion Passage for example, and in both Turnstile 
Streets; but curiosity-shops abound. 

Through Gray's Inn one may gain Bedford Row, which 
might almost be a part of the inn itself, so quiet and 
Georgian is it — the best-preserved and widest Georgian 
street in London, occupied in its earliest days by aristo- 
crats and plutocrats, but now wholly in the hands of the 
Law. I like to think it was at No. 14 that Abernethy 
fired prescriptions and advice at his outraged patients. 
Bedford Row is utterly un-modern. 

I noted as I passed through it one day recently a 
carriage and pair of old-fashioned build drawn up before 
one of the houses. It had the amplitude of the last 
century's youth. There was no rumble, but had there 
been one it would have seemed no excrescence. A coronet 
was on the panel, and the coachman was aged and comfort- 
able and serene. The footman by the door had also the 
air of security that comes of service in a quiet and ancient 
family. Suddenly from the sombre Georgian house 



216 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

emerged a swift young clerk with a sign to the waiting ser- 
vants. The coachman's back lost its curve, the venerable 
horses lifted their ears, the footman stood erect and vigilant, 
as a little, lively, be-ribboned lady and her portly and dig- 
nified man of law appeared in the passage and slowly de- 
scended the steps. The little lady's hand was on his arm ; 
she was feeble and very old, and his handsome white head 
was bent towards her to catch her final instructions. They 
crossed the pavement with tiny steps, and with old-world 
gravity and courtesy he relinquished her to the footman 
and bowed his farewells. She nodded to him as the car- 
riage rolled steadily away, and I had a full glimpse of her 
face, hitherto hidden by her bonnet. It wore an expression 
kindly and relieved, and I felt assured that her mission had 
been rather to add an unexpected and benevolent codicil 
than to disinherit anyone. It all seemed so rightly a part 
of the life of Bedford Row. 

By Great James Street, which is a northern continuation 
of Bedford Row on the other side of Theobald's (pro- 
nounced Tibbies') Road, and, like it, Georgian and wains- 
cotted with oak and out-moded, one comes to Mecklen- 
burgh Square and the Foundling Hospital (known locally 
as the " Fondling ") : the heart of old Bloomsbury. Vis- 
itors are shown over the Hospital on certain days in the 
week; and I think I advise the visit to be made. It is a 
pleasant institution to see, and on the walls of the long low 
rooms are some interesting pictures — its founder, the good 
Captain Coram, painted by Hogarth, who was closely 
associated with the charity; scriptural texts illustrating 
our duties to the fatherless translated into paint by the 
same master and by such contemporaries as Highmore, 
Wills and Hayman; portraits of governors by the score; 
and a portion of a cartoon by Raphael. Here also may 



LITTLE FOUNDLINGS 217 

be seen medals belonging to foundlings who have become 
warriors; cases of odd trinkets attached to foundhngs in 
the old days when these poor little forlorn love-children 
were deposited in the permanent cradle at the gates; sig- 
natures of kings ; old MSS. ; and the keyboard and tuning 
fork that were used by the great George Frederick Handel 
when he was organist here. All these and other curiosities 
will be shown you by a sturdy boy, who will then open the 
door suddenly upon foundlings in class, and foundlings at 
play, the infant school being packed with stolid and solid 
children all exactly alike in their brown clothes and white 
pinafores and all profoundly grateful for a visitor to stare at. 

The boys for the most part become soldiers and sailors : 
the girls go into service. In the early days the boys were 
named after heroes of the battle-field and the ocean, and 
the girls after whom I know not, but St. Xita is their 
patroness, one and all. To-day there may be a new system 
of nomenclature ; but if not, one may expect to find Drakes 
and Rodneys, Nelsons and Collingwoods, Beresfords and 
Fishers, Wellingtons and Havelocks, Gordons and Burna- 
bys, Roberts and Kitcheners. The first boy baby admitted 
was very prettily named Thomas Coram, and the first girl 
baby Eunice Coram, after their kindly stepfather and step- 
mother. 

London, as I have hinted, does little enough for its guests 
on Sundays ; but morning service at the Foundling Hospital 
must certainly be grouped among its entertainments. We 
are not as a people given to mingle much taste or charm 
with our charity : we never quite forgive the pauper or the 
unfortunate ; but there is charm here. Anyone that wishes 
may attend, provided that he adds a silver coin to the 
offertory (here emerging the shining usefulness of the three- 
penny bit !). It has for some years been the custom to 



218 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

appoint as chaplain a preacher of some eloquence or intel- 
lectual bravery, or both. I remember that the first sermon 
I listened to in this square and formal Georgian temple 
touched upon the difference that must always exist in the 
experience of eye-witnesses, an illustration being drawn by 
the divine from " the two bulky volumes on Persia by Mr. 
George Curzon, which doubtless many of you have read." 
I certainly had not read them ; and although the gods stand 
up for bastards I doubt if any of his congregation proper 
had; but there they sat, row upon row, in their gallery, 
all spick and span with their white caps and collars and 
pink cheeks, and gave as little indication as might be that 
they were intensely uninterested, if not positively chilled. 
Perhaps they have their own human sermons too, when 
the silver-edged stranger is not admitted. I hope so. 

If the sermon is ever too advanced for the visitor (and 
I seem to remember that now and again it was so in the 
days of the gifted Momerie) he will always find the children 
worth study. "Boy," said the terrible James Boyer of 
Christ's Hospital to the youthful Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
"boy, the school is your father: boy, the school is your 
mother . . . let's have no more crying." It was not quite 
true of Coleridge, who had a real enough mother in Devon- 
shire: but it is literally true of the children here. Yet 
when the litany comes round their response to the third 
commandment is as hearty as to any other, and as free 
from apparent irony. 

Before the Foundling Hospital was built, in 1739, there 
were fields here, and in 1719 a very early cricket match 
was played in them between the Men of Kent and the Men 
of London for <£60. I know not which won. At No. 77 
Guilford Street, in 1803, lived Sydney Smith. Although 
in the centre of Queen Square, which leads out of Guilford 




VIRGIN AND CHILD 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY BOTTICELLI IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



SCHOLARS' HOUSES 219 

Street to the west, stands a statue of Queen Charlotte, the 
enclosure was named after Queen Anne, in whose reign 
it was built. Many traces of its early state remain. 
Hospitals now throng here, where once were gentlemen 
and scholars : among them Antony Askew, physician and 
Grecian and the friend of all learning ; and Dr. Campbell of 
the Biographia Britannica, whose house Dr. Johnson fre- 
quented until the shivering fear came upon him that the 
Scotsmen who flocked there might accuse him of borrowing 
his good things from their countrymen. Another friend 
of Johnson, Dr. Charles Burney, also lived in Queen Square- 
In a house on the west side, an architect once told me, is 
still to be seen a perfect example of an ancient English 
well. Having no opening into Guilford Street except for 
foot passengers. Queen Square remains one of the quietest 
spots in London, and scholars might well Uve there now. 
Perhaps they do. Such houses would naturally harbour 
book-worms and scholiasts. 

Few streets have changed less, except in residents, than 
Gloucester Street, running between Queen Square and 
Theobald's Road, which dates from Anne or George I and 
has all its original architecture, with two centuries of dirt 
added. It is long and narrow and gives in perfection the 
old Bloomsbury vista. At No. 19 lodged Edward Irving, 
the preacher, when he first came to London, little dreaming 
perhaps that his followers some forty years later were to 
build the cathedral of the Catholic and Apostolic, or 
Irvingite, body in Gordon Square. Great Ormond Street, 
leading out of Queen Square on the east, has much history 
too, especially at No. 45, lately the Working Men's College, 
for it was here that Lord Chancellor Thurlow was living 
when in 1784 the Great Seal was stolen. Here also Thur- 
low entertained the poet Crabbe and thought him " as like 



220 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen." Macaulay lived at 
No. 50 from 1823 to 1831, but the house is now no more: 
part of the Children's Hospital stands on its site. No. 44 
Great Ormond Street is one of the most attractive of the 
old Georgian houses, with some fine iron work to increase 
its charm. 

From Great Ormond Street we gain Lamb's Conduit 
Street, which, crossing Theobald's Road, becomes Red Lion 
Street, an old and narrow street between Bedford Row and 
Red Lion Square. No. 9 Red Lion Street is famous as 
being the house in which the firm of William Morris first 
began its existence and entered upon its career of revolu- 
tionising taste in furniture and driving Victorian stuffiness 
from our houses. At No. 15 lived for a while Burne- Jones 
and Rossetti. Haydon, another painter of individualism 
and purpose, lived on the west side of the square; and 
Henry Meyer, at his studio at No. 3, in the spring of 1826, 
gave sittings to a Uttle dark gentleman in knee-breeches 
with a fine Titian head " full of dumb eloquence," who had 
just left the India House on a pension — Charles Lamb by 
name. The picture may be seen at the India Office in 
Whitehall to-day, commemorating if not the most assiduous 
of its clerks the one who covered its official writing paper 
with the best and tenderest literature. 

Between Red Lion Square and the British Museum, 
whither we are now bound, one object of interest alone is 
to be seen — St. George's Church in Hart Street, famous 
for its pyramidal spire, culminating in a statue not of 
George the Saint but of George the First; placed there, 
to London's intense amusement, by Hucks the brewer. 
Hogarth, who Hked to set a London spire in the back- 
ground of his satirical scenes, has this in his terrible " Gin 
Lane," just as St. Giles, close by, is in his "Beer Street." 



ST. GILES 221 

Munden the actor, whose grimaces and drolleries Lamb 
has made immortal, was buried in the churchyard of St. 
George's, now transformed into a recreation ground. 
Above the old player with the bouquet of faces Bloomsbury 
children now frolic. 

St. Giles'-in-the-Fields is so near that we ought perhaps 
to glance at it before exploring the Museum and the rest 
of Bloomsbury. It is still in the midst of not too savoury 
a neighbourhood, although no longer the obvious antipodes 
to St. James's that it used to be in literature and speech. 
When we want contrasts now we speak of the West End 
and the East End. St. Giles' is a dead letter. The present 
church is not so old as one might think : much later than 
Wren: and it is interesting rather for its forerunner's 
name than for itself, and also for being the last resting 
place of such men as George Chapman, who translated 
Homer into swinging Elizabethan English, Inigo Jones, 
and the sweetest of garden poets, Andrew Marvell. 

Bloomsbury, which is the adopted home of the econom- 
ical American visitor and the Hindoo student; Blooms- 
bury, whose myriad boarding-houses give the lie to the 
poet's statement that East and West can never meet; 
is bounded on the south by Oxford Street and High 
Holborn ; on the north by the Euston Road ; on the east 
by Southampton Row; and on the west by Tottenham 
Court Road. It has few shops and many residents, and 
is a stronghold of middle class respectability and learning. 
The British Museum is its heart: its lungs are Bedford 
Square and Russell Square, Gordon Square and Woburn 
Square : and its aorta is Gower Street, which goes on for 
ever. Lawyers and law students live here, to be near the 
Inns of Court; bookish men live here, to be near the 
Museum; and Jews live here, to be near the University 



222 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

College School, which is non-sectarian. Bloomsbury is 
discreet and handy: it is near everything, and although 
not fashionable, anyone, I understand, may live there 
without losing caste. It belongs to the Ducal House of 
Bedford, which has given its names very freely to its streets 
and squares. 

To my mind Gower Street is not quite old enough to 
be interesting, but it has had some very human inhabit- 
ants of eminence, and has one or two still. Millais lived 
with his father at No. 87 ; the great Peter de Wint, who 
painted English cornfields as no one ever did before or since, 
died at No. 40. In its early days Gower Street was famous 
for — what ? Its rural character and its fruit. Mrs. 
Siddons lived in a house there, the back of which was 
" most effectually in the country and delightfully pleasant " 
while Lord Eldon's peaches (at the back of No. 42), Col. 
Sutherland's grapes (at No. 33), and William Bentham's 
nectarines were the talk of all who ate them. 

Everyone who cares for the beautiful sensitive art of 
John Flaxman, the friend of Blake, should penetrate to 
the dome of University College, where is a fine collection 
of his drawings and reliefs. The College also possesses the 
embalmed body of Jeremy Bentham. Other objects of 
interest in this neighbourhood are the allegorical frescoes 
at University Hall in Gordon Square, filled with portraits 
of great Englishmen ; the memorial to Christina Rossetti 
in Christ Church, Woburn Square; and two unexpected 
and imposing pieces of architecture — St. Pancras Church 
in the Euston Road, and Euston station. Euston station, 
seen at night or through a mist, is one of the most impressive 
sights in London. As Aubrey Beardsley, the marvellous 
youth who perished in his decadence, used to say, Euston 
station made it unnecessary to visit Egypt. I would not 



A BLOOMSBURY ALIEN 223 

add that St. Pancras Church makes it unnecessary to visit 
Greece; but it is a very interesting summary of Greek 
traditions, its main building being an adaptation of the 
Ionic temple of the Erectheion on the Acropolis at Athens, 
its tower deriving from the Horologium or Temple of the 
Winds, and its dependencies, with their noble caryatides, 
being adaptations of the south portico of the Pandroseion, 
also at Athens. 

Bloomsbury, as I have said, gives harbourage to all 
colours, and the Baboo law student is one of the commonest 
incidents of its streets. But the oddest aUen I ever saw 
there was in the area of the house of a medical friend in 
Woburn Square. While waiting on the steps for the bell 
to be answered I heard the sound of brushing, and looking 
down, I saw a small negro boy busily polishing a boot. 
He glanced up with a friendly smile, his eyes and teeth 
gleaming, and I noticed that on his right wrist was a broad 
ivory ring. " So you're no longer an Abolitionist ! " I 
said to the doctor when I at last gained his room. " No," 
he answered : " at least, my sister isn't. That's a boy my 
brother-in-law has just brought from West Africa. He 
didn't exactly want him, but the boy was wild to see 
England, and at the last minute jumped on board." 
" And what does the ring on his arm mean ? " I asked. 
" O, he's a king's son out there. That's a symbol of au- 
thority. At home he has the power of life and death over 
fifty slaves." 

When I came away the boy was still busily at work, but 
he had changed the boots for knife-cleaning. He cast 
another merry smile up to me as I descended the steps — 
the king's son with the power of life and death over fifty 
slaves. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND SOHO 

The Bloomsbury History of the World — Great statuary — Julius Caesar 
and Demeter — The Elgin Marbles — Terra-cotta and bronze — 
MSS. — London's foreign quarter — Soho Square and Golden 
Square — Soho — Cheap restaurants — The old artists' quarter — 
Wardour Street and Berners Street — The great Hoax — Madame 
Tussaud's — Clothes without Illusion — The Chamber of Horrors — 
Thoughts on the Killing of Men — The Vivifying of Little Arthur — 
Waxworks at Night — An Experience in the Edgware Road 

THE British Museum is the history of the world : in 
its Bloomsbury galleries the history of civilisation, 
in its Cromwell Road galleries the history of nature; in 
Bloomsbury man, in Cromwell Road God. The lesson of 
the British Museum is the transitoriness of man and the 
littleness of his greatest deeds. That is the burden of its 
every Bloomsbury room. The ghosts of dead peoples, once 
dominant, inhabit it; the dust of empires fills its air. 
One may turn in from Oxford Street and in half an hour 
pass all the nations of the earth, commanding and servile, 
cultured and uncouth, under review. The finest achieve- 
ments of Greek sculpture are here, and here are the painted 
canoes of the South Sea Islander ; the Egyptian Book of 
the Dead is here, and here, in the Reading Room, is a copy 
of the work you are now judiciously skipping ; the obelisk 
of Shalmaneser is here, and here are cinematoscope records 
of London street scenes. 

224 



BLOOMSBURY'S RICHES 225 

It is too much for one mind to grasp. Nor do I try. 
The Roman Emperors, the Grseco-Roman sculptures, the 
bronzesj the terra-cottas, the Etruscan vases, the gems, 
the ceramics and glass, the prints, the manuscripts, the 
Egyptian rooms — these, with the Reading Room, are my 
British Museum. Among the other things I am too con- 
scious of the typical museum depression : it is all so bleak 
and instructive. 

In vain for me have the archipelagos of the Pacific been 
ransacked for weapons and canoes; in vain for me have 
spades been busy in Assyria and Babylonia. Primitive 
man does not interest me, and Nineveh was not human 
enough. Not till the Egyptians baked pottery divinely 
blue and invented most of civilisation's endearing ways did 
the world begin for me ; but I could spare everything that 
Egypt has yielded us rather than the Demeter of Cnidos, 
the serenest thing in England, or the head of Julius Caesar. 
For although at the Museum the interesting predominates 
over the beautiful, the beautiful is here too ; more than the 
beautiful, the sublime. For here are the Elgin Marbles: 
the Three Fates from the Parthenon, and its bas-reliefs, 
which are among the greatest works of art that man has 
achieved. We may not have the Winged Victory of 
Samothrace, or the Venus of Milo, the Laocoon or the 
Dying Gladiator; but we have these, and we have the 
Demeter and the Julius Caesar and the bronze head of 
Hypnos. 

One reaches the sculpture galleries by way of the Roman 
Gallery, where the Emperors are, culminating in the Julius 
Caesar, surely the most fascinating male head ever chiselled 
from marble. I pause always before the brutal pugilistic 
features of Trajanus, and the Caracalla, so rustic and de- 
termined, and the mischievous charm of Julia Paula. In 

Q 



226 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

the Second Grseco-Roman room is a superb Discobolos, 
and here also is a little beautiful torso of Aphrodite loosen- 
ing her sandal — that action in which the great masters so 
often placed her, that the exquisite contour of the curved 
back might be theirs. My favourites in the Third Grseco- 
Roman room are the head of Aphrodite from the Townley 
Collection — No. 1596 ; the boy extracting a thorn from his 
foot. No. 1755 ; the head of Apollo Musegates, No. 1548, 
the beauty of which triumphs over the lack of a nose in the 
amazing way that the perfect beauty of a statue will — so 
much so indeed that one very soon comes not to miss the 
broken portions at all. It is almost as if one acquires a 
second vision that subconsciously supplies the missing parts 
and enables one to see it whole; or rather prevents one 
from noticing that it is incomplete. I love also the head 
in Asiatic attire — No. 1769 — on the same side, and the 
terminal figure opposite — No. 1742 — on which the winds 
and the rains have laid their softening hand. 

But all these give way to the Ceres, or Demeter, in the 
Greek ante-room. This is to me the most beautiful piece 
of sculpture in the British Museum. It came from the 
sanctuary of Demeter at Cnidos — a temple to worship in 
indeed ! I know of no Madonna in the painting of any 
Ofl old master more material and serene and wise and holy 
than this marble goddess from the fourth century B.C., a 
photograph of which will be found on the opposite page. 

In a case on the right of the Ephesus Room, as you 
enter from this ante-room, are two gems — another little 
Aphrodite, No. 1417, with a back of liquid softness; and 
a draped figure of the same goddess, from her temple at 
Cyrene — the lower half only — the folds of the dress being 
exquisite beyond words. 

And so we enter the room which brings more people to 




THE DEMETEH UV CNIDOS 

AFTEK THE STATUE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 



TERRA-COTTA 227 

Bloomsbury than any other treasure here — the room of the 
Elgin Marbles, which certain sentimentalists would restore 
to Greece but which I for one think better here. The 
group of Fates is the most wonderful ; and it is difficult to 
imagine how much more impressive they would be if they 
were unmutilated. As it is, they have more dignity and 
more beauty than the ordinary observer can witness un- 
moved. Broken fragments as they are, they are the last 
word in plastic art ; and one wonders how the Athenians 
dared look at their temple in its perfection. On a lower 
plane, but great and satisfying and beautiful beyond de- 
scription, are some of the reliefs from the frieze — the per- 
fection of the treatment of the horse in decorative art. 
Such horses, such horsemen: hfe and loveliness in every 
line. 

From marble it is interesting to pass to terra-cotta: 
from the sublime to the charming : from the tremendous 
to the pretty. It is, however, charm and prettiness of a 
very high order, some of the little figures from Tanagra 
and Eretria being exquisite. Note in particular these 
numbers for their grace and their quaintness : C. 299, an 
aged nurse and child ; C. 278, mother and child ; C. 245, 
a girl with a fan; C. 214, the writing lesson; C. 250, a 
woman draped and hooded (this is reproduced in the ad- 
mirable official catalogue) ; C. 308, a little girl, and C. 196, 
a Cupid. The domesticity of so many of these figures — 
the women with fans, the girls playing astrageli, and so 
forth — always brings to my mind that idyll of Theocritus 
in which the two frivolous women chat together. 

After the terra-cottas we come to the bronzes, chief 
among which is the wonderful Hypnos from Perugia. Of 
the treasures of these rooms I can say nothing: they are 
endless. And so we pass on to the four Vase rooms, and 



228 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

then come to ancient Egypt, where everything that we do 
now and deem novel and exciting (short of electricity and 
motors) seems to have been old game. 

Parallel with the Egyptian rooms are a series of smaller 
rooms illustrating the history of religion, leading to the 
Ethnographical Gallery, which leads in its turn to netsukes 
(the variety and perfection of which are alike bewildering), 
ceramics and prints. 

The collection of English and foreign pottery and porce- 
lain and glass is fascinatingly displayed, and one may lose 
oneself completely here, whether it is before Lowestoft and 
Chelsea or old Greek prismatic glass. Delft or Nankin, 
Sevres or Wedgewood, Persian tiles or Rhodian plates. 

One reaches the ground floor again by way of the 
Medieval Room, which contains many odd treasures but is 
perhaps rather too much like an old curiosity- shop, such as 
Balzac describes in the Peau de Chagrin or Stevenson in 
Markheim. In the room at the end of the porcelain gallery 
an exhibition of drawings and engravings from the print 
department is usually on view. At the moment at which 
I write it is given up to mezzotints. 

But before descending again, one ought to see the orna- 
ments and gems — marvellous intaglios and cameos beyond 
price from Egypt and Greece and Rome ; precious stones 
of every variety, and wonderful imitations of precious stones 
of every variety, which, false as they may be, are still quite 
precious enough for me ; gold work of all periods ; the 
famous Portland Vase of blue glass; and frescoes from 
Pompeii. 

One of the most interesting things in the Hall of Inscrip- 
tions on the way to the Reading Room is the slab of marble 
which used to be hung outside a Roman circus, with the 
words on it, in Latin : " Circus Full. Great Shouting. 



WE ENTER SOHO 229 

Doors Closed." Few things bring the modernity of 
Romans, or the ancientry of ourselves, so vividly before 
one. 

A continuous exhibition of illuminated books, famous 
MSS., letters and early printed books is held in the cases in 
the library galleries to the right of the Entrance Hall. 
Here one may see Books of Hours, Bibles and missals, with 
quaint and patient drawings by Flemish and Italian 
artists; the handwriting of kings and scholars, Boer 
generals and divines ; manuscripts of poems by Keats and 
Pope, illustrating the laborious stages by which perfection 
is reached ; an early story by Charlotte Bronte in a hand 
too small to be legible to the naked eye ; a commonplace 
book of Milton's; and books from the presses of Caxton 
and Gutenberg. Here also are manuscript pages of the 
Iliad and the Odyssey from old Greek libraries, with com- 
ments by old Greek scholars. 

It is not until one has wandered in the British Museum 
for some weeks that one begins to realise how inexhaustible 
it is. To know it is impossible ; but the task of extracting 
its secrets is made less difficult by acquiring and studying 
its excellent catalogues, which are on sale in the Entrance 
Hall. Apart from their immediate use they are very good 
reading. 

The quickest way to Soho from the Museum is down 
Shaftesbury Avenue ; or one may fight one's way through 
the blended odours of beer, pickles and jam, all in the mak- 
ing, to Soho Square, and recover one's self-respect in the 
Roman Catholic church of St. Patrick, which is there. So 
Italian is its interior that you cannot beUeve you are in 
London at all. 

Soho proper lies between Oxford Street, Charing Cross 
Road, Leicester Square and Warwick Street; but the 



230 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

corresponding parellelogram north of Oxford Street, 
bounded by the Tottenham Court Road, the Euston Road 
and Great Portland Street, is now almost equally foreign, 
the pavements of Great Portland Street in particular being 
very cosmopolitan. I have been told that in the Percy 
Street and Cleveland Street neighbourhood many of the 
great anarchist plots have been hatched ; certain it is that 
London has offered as many advantages to the political 
desperado as any city, except perhaps Geneva. 

The foreign residents of Soho proper are almost exclu- 
sively French ; north of Oxford Street we find Italians too 
and Germans. Poorer ItaHans still, organ grinders from 
Chiaveri, monkey boys from further south and ice cream 
men from Naples live on Saffron Hill, by Leather Lane; 
Swiss mechanics live in Clerkenwell; poor Jews live in 
Whitechapel, as we have seen ; middle-class Jews in Maida 
Vale ; rich Jews in Bayswater. American settlers are fond 
of Hampstead; American visitors like the Embankment 
hotels or Bloomsbury . Although there are many exceptions, 
one can generalise quite safely on London's settlements, not 
only of foreigners, but of professional and artistic groups. 
Thus the artists live in Chelsea, Kensington, St. John's 
Wood and Hampstead ; the chief doctors are in and about 
Harley Street; Music Hall performers like to cross the 
river on their way home; musicians congregate about 
Baker Street; Kensington has many literary people. 

In addition to Leicester Square, which is however far less 
French than it used to be, Soho has two squares — Soho 
Square and Golden Square. It is Soho Square which gives 
the name to the district — " So ho ! " an old cry of the har- 
riers, but why thus applied no one knows. The story that 
it was previously called Monmouth Square and King's 
Square, and changed to Soho Square after Sedgemoor, 



OLD COMPTON STREET 231 

where "So ho !" was Monmouth's battle-call, is, I believe, 
disproved ; the reverse being the fact — the battle-cry com- 
ing from the neighbourhood. The Duke of Monmouth 
was the first resident here — in 1681 — his house being 
on the south side, between Frith Street and Greek Street. 
Other residents in the Square were Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 
the admiral, "Vathek" Beckford and Sir Joseph Banks, 
the botanist. A statue of Charles the Second used to 
stand in the centre, facing the house of his unlucky natural 
son. George the Second still stands in Golden Square, half 
a mile to the west, which a few years ago it would have 
been imperative to visit, for it had, on the south side, one 
of the comeliest of London's Georgian houses ; but that too 
has now gone and the square is uninteresting. In the midst 
is a fantastic statue of George 11. Miss Killmansegg ought 
to have lived here, but did not. Golden Square was, how- 
ever, the abode of Ralph Nickleby, and in real life, among 
others, of Angelica Kauffmann, the artist (Mrs. Ritchie's 
charming " Miss Angel "), and Cardinal Wiseman, who may 
or may not have been Bishop Blougram who apologised. 
Soho has never been the same since Shaftesbury Avenue 
and the Charing Cross Road ploughed through her midst 
and to eat in her restaurants became a fashion. Before 
those days she was a city apart, a Continental city within a 
London city, living her own life; but now she is open to 
all. In fact you now see more English than French in her 
Lisle Street and Gerrard Street and Old Compton Street 
restaurants. It is the English who eat there, the French 
and Italian proprietors who retire with fortunes. In the 
old days Wardour Street may be said to have been the 
main artery of Soho, but now her most characteristically 
French street is Old Compton Street. Here are comestible 
shops, exactly as in the Rue St. Honore, and the greatest 



232 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

profusion of cheap restaurants, most of which soon have 
their day and disappear. Since the habit of eating away 
from home has seized London, it has become quite a 
pursuit to discover new eighteen-penny tables d'hdte in this 
neighbourhood. We now swap catalogues of their merit 
as we used to swap stories. 

Many of Soho's streets retain their old character. Ger- 
rard Street, for example, although the headquarters of 
telephoning, is yet full of the past. One of the cheap 
restaurants here is in Edmund Burke's old house; a little 
farther east, on the same side, at No. 43, is the house where 
Dryden died: it is now a publisher's oflSce. Both have 
tablets. At the corner of Gerrard Street and Greek Street, 
at the Turk's Head, the " Literary Club " which Reynolds 
founded used to meet. Here also the Artists' Club met; 
for a hundred and fifty years ago this was the centre of the 
artists' quarter. Hogarth and Reynolds lived in Leicester 
Square ; Hogarth's painting Academy was in St. Martin's 
Lane. Reynolds, Wilson, Hayman and Gainsborough met 
at the Turk's Head with regularity and limited themselves 
to half a pint of wine apiece. Sir Thomas Lawrence lived 
in Greek Street, and there Wedgewood had show-rooms. 

Frith Street was the early home of Edmund Kean, and 
Macready had lodgings there in 1816. At No. 6 (a tablet 
marks the house) William Hazlitt died, in 1830. Charles 
Lamb stood by his bed. "Well, I've had a happy life," 
Hazlitt said ; but he was bragging. He was buried at St. 
Anne's, between Dean Street and Wardour Street. 

The artists' quarter extended due north beyond Oxford 
Street to Newman Street and Berners Street. Dean Street 
was full of artists — Thornhill, Hayman, Hamilton, Bailey, 
James Ward, all lived there, and Christie's auction rooms 
were there too. It was Fanny Kelly, Lamb's friend, who 



BERNERS STREET 233 

built the Royalty Theatre. In Newman Street lived and 
died Benjamin West — at No. 14 ; Stothard at 28. Fanny 
Kemble was born in this street. 

Berners Street is still one of the most sensible streets in 
London, of a width that modern vestries have not had 
the wit to imitate. With the Middlesex Hospital at the 
end it has a very attractive vista. This also was given up 
to the painters : Fuseli was at No. 13, Opie at No. 8, 
Henry Bone, whose miniatures we saw at the Wallace 
Collection, at 15. At No. 7 Hved the wretched Fauntle- 
roy, the banker and forger, whom Bernard Barton, the 
Quaker poet, was urged by a mischievous friend never to 
emulate. It was upon the lady at No. 54, a Mrs. Totting- 
ham, that Theodore Hook played his dreary "Berners 
Street hoax," which consisted in sending hundreds of 
tradesmen to her door at the same hour with articles she 
had not ordered and did not want, including a hearse. 
David Roberts, who painted cathedrals like an angel, did 
not live here, but it was while walking along Berners Street 
that he received the apoplectic stroke from which he died. 

If I do not dally longer in this part of London it is 
because I do not care much for it. It is a little seamy, and 
after Berners Street no longer quite the real thing — not 
old enough on the one hand, or clean enough on the other. 
Let us look at the old curiosity-shops of Great Portland 
Street and so pass through the discreet medical district of 
Harley Street and Welbeck Street to a British institution 
which it would never do to miss — Madame Tussaud's. 

The imposing red facade of Madame Tussaud's in 
Marylebone Road must give the foreigner a totally false 
impression of English taste in amusement ; for the exhibi- 
tion does not really bear the intimate relation to the city 
that its size might lead one to expect. Who goes to 



234 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Madame Tussaud's I cannot say. All I know is that 
whenever I have asked friends and acquaintances of my 
own (as I have been doing lately) if they have been, they 
reply in the negative, or date their only visit many years 
ago. I wonder if men of eminence steal in now and then 
to see what their eflSgies are like and what notice they are 
drawing, as painters are said to lurk in the vicinity of 
their canvases at the Royal Academy to pick up crumbs 
of comfort. I wonder if Mr. Kipling has ever seen the 
demure figure that smirks beneath his name; I wonder 
if the late Dr. Barnardo really wore, "in the form," as the 
spiritualists say, a collar such as he wears in his waxen 
representation ? Has Lord Kitchener ever examined the 
chest which his modeller has given him ? Were he to 
do so he would probably feel as I always do in the presence 
of the waxen — that they ought to be better. There is 
hardly a figure in this exhibition that conveys any illusion 
of life. Their complexions are not right; their hair is 
not right. Their clothes are obviously the clothes of the 
inanimate; they have no notion what to do with their 
hands. 

Thinking it over, I have come to the conclusion that 
not only the unreality, but also the eeriness, almost fear- 
someness, of a waxwork, reside principally in its clothes. 
A naked waxwork, though unpleasant, would not be so 
bad: it is the clothes wanting life to vivify and justify it 
that make it so terrible, just as clothes on a corpse add 
to the horror of death. One wonders where the clothes 
come from. Do they also, like the features and hair of 
these figures, approximate to life, or are they chosen at 
random ? Mr. Burns, it is well known, relinquished one 
of his blue serge suits in exchange for a new one; but 
the others ? Mr. Balfour, for example ? Are there under- 




JEAN ARNOLFINI AND JEANNE, HIS WIFE 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY JAN VAN EYCK IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY 



THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS 235 

clothes too ? Does the Tussaud estabhshment include a 
tailor and a modiste ? To these questions I could no 
doubt obtain a satisfactory reply by merely writing to the 
exhibition ; but there are occasions when it is more amus- 
ing to remain in the domain of conjecture. This is one. 

I wandered into Madame Tussaud's a little while ago 
entirely for the purpose of saying something about it in 
this book. As it was a foggy day, I had some difficulty 
in disentangling the visitors from the effigies; but when 
I did so I saw that they wore a provincial air. I felt a 
little provincial myself as I passed from figure to figure 
and turned to the catalogue to see if I were looking at the 
late Daniel Leno or Mr. Asquith. 

The Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's is 
London's Cabaret des Neants, London's Wiertz Museum. 
Horrors are not encouraged in England, and London has 
no other official collection of them, if we except the assem- 
blage of articles of crime that Scotland Yard cherishes. 
But jemmies and pistols and knives are not in themselves 
horrors, whereas wax decapitated heads dropping blood, 
coloured pictures of diseases, models of criminals being 
tortured, a hangman and a condemned man on the scaffold 
— these exist by virtue of their horrifying power, and you 
are asked for an extra sixpence frankly as a payment for 
shudders. 

It is all ugly and coarse, and in part very silly, as when 
you are confronted by a dock crammed with effigies of the 
more notorious murderers (the only really interesting 
murderers, of course, being those who have escaped detec- 
tion or even suspicion : but how should Madame Tussaud's 
patrons know this ?) all blooming with the ruddy tints 
of health. Seeing them packed together like this for 
execration, one may reflect, not perhaps wholly without 



236 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

admiration and certainly with pity, that they are here 
less because they were wicked than because they dared to 
anticipate the laggard steps of Fate. One may be a little 
perplexed too, if one knows anything of history, by the 
disrepute into which this business of killing a man has 
fallen. That these poor, shabby, impulsive, ill-balanced 
creatures should be the only unlicensed shedders of blood 
that are left ! And had Madame Tussaud lived in Iceland 
in the twelfth century would she have modelled Gunnar 
of Lithend and Scarphedinn to the same vulgar purposes .'' 
But one must not wholly deprecate. The exhibition as 
a whole may be supplying a demand that is essentially 
vulgar: many of its models may be too remote from life 
to be of any real value : the Chamber of Horrors may be 
beyond question a sordid and hideous accessory: yet in 
the other scale must be put some of the work of Madame 
Tussaud herself — her Voltaire, which is to me one of the 
most interesting things in London, as his life mask at the 
Carnavalet is one of the most interesting things in Paris ; a 
few of her other heads belonging to the reign of Terror, 
notably the Robespierre; the very guillotine that shed so 
much of France's best and bravest blood ; and the relics of 
Napoleon. We must remember too that it is very easy 
and very tempting to be more considerate for the feelings 
of children than is necessary. Children have a beautiful 
gift of extracting pure gold from baser material without 
a stain of the alloy remaining upon them ; and we are apt 
to forget this in our adult fulminations against vulgarity 
and ugliness. For children Madame Tussaud's will always 
be one of the ante-rooms to the earthly paradise, whether 
they go or not. The name has a magic that nothing can 
destroy. And though they should not, if I were taking 
them, ever set foot in the subterranean Temple of Tur- 



WAXWORKS AT NIGHT 237 

pitude, they would, I have very good reason to know, come 
away from the study of kings and queens of England, and 
the historical tableaux — the finding of Harold's body, and 
the burning of the cakes by Alfred the Great, the execution 
of Mary Queen of Scots and the death of Becket, the sign- 
ing of Magna Charta and other scenes in Little Arthur — 
with a far more vivid idea of English history and interest 
in it than any schoolmaster or governess could give them. 
And that is a great thing. 

None the less, not willingly do these footsteps wander 
that way again; and I would sooner be the chairman of 
the Society for Psychical Research's committee for the in- 
vestigation of haunted houses than spend the night among 
these silent, stony-eyed mockeries of humanity. Surely 
they move a little at night. Very slowly, I am sure, very 
cautiously. . . , You would hear the low grinding sound 
of two glass eyes being painfully brought into focus. . . . 

I could go mad in a waxwork exhibition. Once I nearly 
did. It was in the Edgware Road, and the admission fee 
was a penny. A small shop and house had been taken and 
filled with figures, mostly murderers. The place was badly 
lit, and by the time I had reached the top floor and had 
run into a poisoner, Mrs. Hogg and Percy Lefroy Mapleton, 
I was totally unhinged. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE PARKS AND THE ZOO 

London's Open Spaces — Slumberers — Park Characteristics — The 
Bulbs — The Marble Arch Theologians — Kensington Gardens — 
The Little White Bird — Regent's Park — The Zoo — Sunday in 
London — Sally the Chimpanzee — Jumbo — London and Popular 
Songs — England under Elephantiasis — The Relief of the Adipose 
— The Seals and Sea-lions — Feeding-time Evolutions — A rival 
to Man — Lord's — Fragrant Memories — Dorset Square 

FOR those who have to get there, London's finest open 
space — or " lung," as the leader writers say — is 
Hampstead Heath. But Hampstead Heath is a journey 
for special occasions : the Parks are at our doors — Hyde 
Park and Kensington Gardens, St. James's Park and Green 
Park, Regent's Park and Battersea Park. What London 
would be like without these tracts of greenery and such 
minor oases as the gardens of her squares one cannot think. 
In hot weather she is only just bearable as it is. (Once 
again I apply the word London to a very limited central 
area: for as a matter of fact there are scores of square 
miles of houses and streets in the East End that have no 
open space near them, Victoria Park having to suffice for 
an immense and overcrowded district, whereas the West- 
ender may if he likes walk all the way from Kensington to 
Westminster under trees. 

Each of these parks has its own character ; but one sight 
is common to all, and that is the supine slumberer. Even 

238 



HYDE PARK 239 

immediately after rain, even on a sunny day in February 
(as I have just witnessed), you will see the London work- 
ing-man (as we call him) stretched on his back or on his 
front asleep in every park. I have seen them in the Green 
Park on a hot day in summer so numerous and still that 
the place looked like a battle-field after action. Do these 
men die of rheumatic fever, one wonders, or are the pre- 
cautions which most of us take against damp superfluous 
and rather pitifully self -protective ? 

To come to characteristics, Battersea Park is for games ; 
St. James's Park for water fowl; the Green Park for re- 
pose ; Hyde Park for fashion and horsemanship ; Kensing- 
ton Gardens for children and toy boats ; and Regent's 
Park for botany and wild beasts. You could put them all 
into the Bois de Boulogne and lose them, but they are none 
the worse for that ; and in the early spring their bulbs are 
wonderful. One has to be in London to see how beauti- 
fully crocuses can grow among the grass. 

I have said that Hyde Park is for fashion and horseman- 
ship ; but it is for other things too — for meets of the Four 
in Hand club (which still exists in spite of petrol) : for 
peacocks : for oratory. Just within the park by the 
Marble Arch is the battle-ground of the creeds. Here on 
most afternoons, and certainly on Sundays, you may find 
husky noisy men trimming God to their own dimensions or 
denying Him altogether : each surrounded by a little knot 
of listless inquisitive idlers, who pass from one to anothei* 
quite impartially. To be articulate being the beginning 
and end of all Marble Arch orations, the presence of an 
audience matters little or nothing. Now and then an 
atheist tackles a neo-Christian speaker, or a Christian 
tackles an atheist ; but nothing comes of it. Such good or 
amusing things as we have been led to suppose are then 



240 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

said are (like the retorts of 'bus drivers) mostly the inven- 
tion of the descriptive humorist in his study. 

Unless you want very obvious space, an open sky and 
straight paths enclosed by iron railings, or unless you want 
to see fashionable people in carriages or in the saddle, my 
advice to the visitor to Hyde Park is to walk along the 
north side until he reaches the Serpentine, follow the east 
bank of it (among the peacocks) to the bridge, and then 
cross the bridge and enter Kensington Gardens. In this 
way he will see the Serpentine at its best, remote from 
the oarsmen and the old gentlemen who sail toy boats; 
he will see all the interesting water fowl; and he will 
have been among trees and away from crowds all the time. 

I wonder how many persons have asked themselves 
where the Serpentine comes from ? I happen to know. 
And what becomes of it ? I happen to know that too, the 
knowledge coming, like all knowledge, either from con- 
versation with someone better informed than oneself, as in 
my case, or from the printed word, as in yours. The 
Serpentine comes from the West Bourne, which still flows 
under Westbourne Grove and William Whiteley's, and 
entering the park opposite Stanhope Terrace, forms, with 
artificial assistance, the Serpentine, and runs out at the 
cascade near Hyde Park Corner, where the rabbits and 
disgustingly fat pigeons live. Then, travelling under 
Belgravia, it provides the King with the ornamental water 
in Buckingham Palace Garden; again plunging under- 
ground it emerges as the lake in St. James's Park; and 
after that it runs into the Thames, and so into the sea. 

Personally I would view with composure a veto pro- 
hibiting me from all the parks, so long as I might have the 
freedom of Kensington Gardens. Here one sees the spring 
come in as surely and sweetly as in any Devonshire lane ; 



DOGS AND THE GARDENS 241 

here the sheep on a hot day have as unmistakable a violet 
aura as on a Sussex down ; here the thrush sings (how he 
sings !) and the robin ; here the daffodils fling back the 
rays of the sun with all the assurance of Kew; here the 
hawthorns burst into flower as cheerily as in Kent ; here 
is much shade, and chairs beneath it, and cool grass to 
walk on. Here also is a pleasant little tea-house where I 
have had breakfast in June in the open air as if it were 
France; while in winter the naked branches of the trees 
have a perfectly unique gift of holding the indigo mist: 
holding it, and enfolding it, and cherishing it. 

Here also are dogs. In all the residential parts of London 
dogs are very numerous, but Kensington Gardens is the 
place if you would study them. Ordinary families have 
one dog only ; but the families which use the Gardens have 
many. There is one old gentleman with eight dachshunds. 
And the children. . . . But here I refer you to The Little 
White Bird, where you will find not only the law of the 
Gardens by day, but are let into the secret of Kensington 
Gardens by night, when the gates are locked, and all is 
still, and Peter Pan creeps into his cockle-shell boat. . . . 

Regent's Park has the Botanical Gardens and the Zoo- 
logical Gardens to add to its attractions. The Park itself is 
green and spacious, yet with too few trees to shade it, and 
too many wealthy private residents like unto moths fretting 
its garment. The stockbroker who stealthily encloses strips 
of a Surrey common must have learned his business in 
Regent's Park. But to anyone who cares for horticulture 
or wild beasts this is the neighbourhood to live in — in one 
of the cool white terraces on the park's edge, or thereabouts. 
When I first came to London I had rooms near by, and 
every Monday morning I visited the beaver and the wombats 
and the wallabys — Monday being a sixpenny day. 



242 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

All that the Zoo needs to perfect it is the throwing open 
of its doors on Sunday, the one day on which so many 
Londoners have a chance of visiting it. Open on Sundays 
it now is, it is true, but only for members and their friends, 
who, being well-to-do, could go on any other day equally 
well. London Sabbatarianism breaks down in the summer 
so completely on the Thames, and in the winter in Queen's 
Hall, the Sunday League concert rooms, and the chief 
restaurants, that a few steps more might easily be taken 
without risk. 

There has lately been added to the Zoo a new house for 
the larger and more horrible human Simian varieties, such 
as the ourang-outang, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, who 
if they do not share with us the privilege of an immortal 
soul have too many other of our attributes to be quite 
comfortable to watch; but the Zoo has not in this year, 
1906, in which I write, any very famous inmates — any- 
thing for example, to compare with Sally, the chimpanzee, 
or Jumbo, the elephant, of whom all frequenters will talk 
with a regretful shake of the head, as though they would 
add, " Unfortunate man ! How little you know of zoologi- 
cal joy. Those were the days ! " — just as elderly gentle- 
men at Lord's mournfully deprecate modern attempts to 
bowl and keep wicket — " You should have seen A. G. 
Steel ! " or " Alfred Lyttelton was the man ! " 

Well, I never saw Sally, and I never saw Jumbo : both 
were before my London life began; but I can remember 
reading of Sally's death, and I took some small part at 
school in singing in a modest and not too tuneful voice 
that melody which, when Jumbo was sold to Barnum, 
became for a while our national anthem. For London 
takes its songs very seriously. One at a time they come, 
and are studiously done to death — in the streets by organs 



JUMBO 243 

and bands and whistling boys and humming men, and 
at smoking concerts and indoors generally by amateur 
vocalists. New songs come — to-day usually from Amer- 
ica, very saccharine and sickly — steadily one after the 
other, conquer, and die slowly. Some of their last struggles 
may be observed on Campden Hill, where organs abound, 
and are abounding at this very moment as I write : this 
particular street being (I am very glad to say) not one of 
those which prohibit cries and music. I know all our 
regular organs' times and tunes by heart. It is a great 
moment even to me when a new tune is added ; but what 
must it be to the grinder ? 

But to return to Jumbo. He was the largest elephant 
the Zoo had ever owned: I believe the largest elephant 
known; and when it was decided to part with him to 
America, a wave of indignation ran over the country. 
Priceless pictures and autographs are allowed to pass to 
American collections without a word of protest being 
raised ; but the loss of this mammoth touched the popular 
imagination. "Strange," says the hymn, "we never miss 
the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown." Jumbo 
had not so wonderfully warm a corner in the national 
heart while he was accessible, to be a target for buns or 
a mount for children; but no sooner was his impending 
departure announced than he became the darling of the 
day. The papers were full of him ; we all, as I said, sang 
a song about him ; a bride sent him some wedding cake ; 
the officials at the Zoo were overwhelmed with presents 
for him. None the less he went, and shortly after reach- 
ing America wandered out of custody on to a railway 
line, met an express train, and died; the train also being 
injured. Fat people were not sorry to hear of this calamity, 
for at that time no one of any conspicuous bulk, whether 



244 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

at school or on the Stock Exchange, had the good fortune 
to escape the name of Jumbo, just as a dozen years earlier 
they had all been called Tichborne. I know not what 
they are called to-day. 

Every frequenter of the Zoo has his favourite animals. 
Personally I am most interested in the seals and sea-lions. 
The elephant in England is soon learned ; the giraffes, so 
frail and exotic, I always fear will die before I can get out ; 
monkeys make me uneasy, and lions and tigers, pacing 
behind their bars, are, however splendid, pathetic figures. 
But the sea-lions and the seals do not suggest captivity: 
they frolic while 'tis May, and May is continual with them. 
But I suppose the best time to see them is half-past three, 
when they are fed. In their new home, which is a veritable 
mermaid's pool, with rocks and caverns and real depth 
of water, they have room for evolutions of delight: and 
as their keeper is a particularly sympathetic man with a 
fine dramatic sense, this makes feeding-time a very enter- 
taining quarter of an hour. It is worth making a special 
effort to be there then, if only to see how one of these 
nimble creatures can hurl itself out of the water to a rock 
all in one movement. It is worth being there then to note 
the astounding and rapturous celerity with which the sea- 
lions can move in the water — beyond all trains and motor 
cars — and the grace of them in their properer element. 

Seals and sea-lions, it is getting to be well known, are 
the real aristocrats of the brute creation. One had 
always heard this; but it is only lately, since troupes of 
them have been seen on the variety stage, that one has 
realised it. When an ordinary wet seal from some chilly 
northern sea — a thing that we kill to keep warm the 
shoulders of rich men's wives — can balance a billiard cue 
on its nose with as much intelligence as the superb Cinque- 



THE SUPERMAN? 245 

valli, it is time to wonder if there is not some worthy 
mental destiny for it more useful in its way than any com- 
forting property of its fur. That most animals can be 
taught routine, I know; that they can be coached into 
mechanical feats is a commonplace; but to get one to 
understand the laws of gravity is a miracle. Not only in 
a stationary position can this amphibian balance the cue, 
but move flappingly along the stage with its precarious 
burden and mount a pedestal. This is very wonderful. 
And at the Music Hall where I saw this feat other things 
happened too — displays of humour, well-reasoned games 
of ball between two sea-lions while their trainer was off 
the stage, and so forth — which show that it is time for us 
to revise our notions of these gentle creatures. Here is 
a potential new force. It is undoubtedly time to clothe 
our wives in other material, and think of the seal less as 
a skin than a mind. We might try experiments. Suppose 
the Lord Chancellor really were a Great Seal. . . . 

Perhaps the seal is the superman of the future. In 
any case it should be the subject of a scientific memoir. 
When seals and sea-lions come nearer our own vaunted 
abilities than any other member of the brute creation we 
are entitled to be told why. " Go to the ant " was never 
a piece of counsel that aroused me ; but " Go to the seal '* 
has logic in it. 

When the summer comes it is not, however, Hyde Park 
with its breadth of sky and its peacocks, not Kensington 
Gardens with its trees and the Round Pond's argosies, not 
Regent's Park even at sheep-shearing time, not St. James's 
Park with its water fowl ; it is none of these that call me. 
My open space then is Lord's cricket ground in St. John's 
Wood (where acacias and lilac flourish). For the Oval, the 
great South London ground, where Surrey used to beat all 



246 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

comers and may do so again, I have never cared : it is not 
comfortable unless one is a member of the club ; it is too 
big nicely to study the game; there are too many pot- 
houses around it ; and I dislike gasometers. But Lord's I 
love. There one may sit at ease and watch minutely the 
best cricket in the world. It was there that, scarlet with 
shame, I saw the Australian team of 1896 dismissed on a 
good wicket for 18, one after another falling to Pougher of 
Leicestershire, who had never puzzled any batsman before, 
and puzzled none after ; it was there that I saw Mr. Webbe 
bowled by Mordecai Sherwin, who took off the gloves for 
the purpose, leading to the batsman's famous mot that he 
" felt as if he had been run over by a donkey cart " ; it was 
there that I saw Mr. Stoddart straight drive a ball from 
the nursery end along the ground so hard that it rebounded 
forty measured yards from the Pavilion railings; it was 
there that I saw four distinct hundreds scored in the Uni- 
versity match of 1893 ; it was there that I saw Sir T. C. 
O'Brien and Mr. A. J. L. Ford heroically pull the Surrey 
and Middlesex match out of the fire in, I think, the same 
year. But when Albert Trott at last realised his ambi- 
tion of hitting the ball clean over the Pavilion I was not 
there. Perhaps he will do it again: cricket is full of 
thrills, and what man has done man can do. 

I like to approach Lord's through Dorset Square, which 
was the site of the original ground, because then I feel I 
may be passing over the exact spot where Alexander, Duke 
of Hamilton, was standing when he made his great drive — 
a hit which sent the ball one hundred and thirty-two yards 
before it touched earth. A stone was erected to com- 
memorate this feat. Where is it now? 



CHAPTER XVIII 

KENSINGTON AND THE MUSEUMS 

Two Burial Grounds — Kensington's Charm — Kensington's Babies — 
Victorian Influence — Kensington Palace — Holland House — 
Two Painters — The Model Buildings — The Albert Memorial — 
Indian Treasures — Machinery for Miles — Heartrending Bargains 

— A Palace of Applied Art — Raphael's Cartoons — Water Colours 

— John Constable — The Early British Masters — The Jones 
Bequest — The Stage and some MSS. — A Perfect One-man Col- 
lection — The Natural History Museum 

KENSINGTON in itself, no less than in its beautiful 
name, is the most attractive of the older and con- 
tiguous suburbs. The roads to it are the pleasantest in 
London, whether one goes thither through the greenery of 
the park and Kensington Gardens, deviously by the Serpen- 
tine and among the trees, or by Kensington Gore, south of 
the Park, or by the Bayswater Road, north of it. 

The Bayswater route is the least interesting of the three, 
save for its two burial grounds — one spreading behind the 
beautiful little Chapel of the Ascension, which is opened 
all day for rest and meditation and guards the old cemetery 
of St. George's, Hanover Square, now no longer used, where 
may be seen the grave of Laurence Sterne : and the other 
the garden of the keeper's lodge at Victoria Gate, which is, 
so far as I know, the only authorised burial ground for 
dogs, and is crowded with little headstones marking the last 
resting place of Tiny and Fido, Max and Prince and Teufel. 

247 



248 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Kensington is of course no longer what it was ; but the 
old Palace still stands on its eastern side, and Holland 
House still stands on its western side, and Kensington 
Square is not much injured on the south, and Aubrey 
House is as beautiful as ever, on the very summit of the 
hill, and Cam House and Holly Lodge (where Macaulay 
died) are untouched, below it. It is true that Church 
Street, which still has many signs of the past, is to be 
widened, and that great blocks of flats have risen and are 
rising — one of them to the obliteration of old Campden 
House, and that Earl's Terrace and Edwardes Square are 
to be pulled down and built over in the next few years, 
and that no doubt all Phillimore Terrace will soon be 
shops. Yet active as the builder and rebuilder are they 
have not been allowed to smirch this reserved and truly 
aristocratic neighbourhood. Notwithstanding all its flats 
and new houses it still has its composure and is intel- 
lectually contented. Kensington knows : you can teach it 
nothing. 

With Edwardes Square, by the way, will vanish perhaps 
the best specimen of the small genteel square of a hundred 
years ago that still exists : every house minute, and all 
cheerful and acquainted with art. It is impossible to avoid 
the impression as one walks through it that Leigh Hunt 
once lived here — and as a matter of fact he did ! 

I said something in an earlier chapter about St. James's 
Street and Pall Mall and Savile Row being men's streets. 
Almost equally is the south pavement of Kensington High 
Street a preserve of women. In fact Kensington is almost 
wholly populated by women. Not until this year, I am 
told, was a boy baby ever born there — and he, to empha- 
sise the exception and temper his loneliness, brought a twin 
brother with him. Why girl babies should so curiously 



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KENSINGTON PALACE FROM THE GARDENS 



VICTORIAN KENSINGTON 249 

outnumber the boy babies of Kensington is a problem which 
I cannot attempt to solve. The borough has plenty of sci- 
entific men in it — from Dr. Francis Galton and Professor 
Ray Lankester downwards — to make any hazardous 
conjectures of mine unnecessary ; but I would suggest with 
all deference that the supply of girl babies may be influ- 
enced (1) by the necessity of maintaining the feminine char- 
acter of the High Street, and (2) by fashion, the most illus- 
trious and powerful woman of the last hundred years having 
been born at Kensington Palace. I rather lean to the sec- 
ond theory, for Kensington being so much under the 
dominion of the Victorian idea — with the Palace on the 
edge of it, the amazing souvenir of the queen (a kind of 
granite candle) in the High Street, her statue in the gardens, 
and a sight of the Albert Hall and Memorial inevitably on 
one's way into London or out of it — it is only natural that 
some deep impression should be conveyed. 

Although Kensington Palace began its royal career with 
William and Mary, and it was Anne who directed Wren to 
add the beautiful Orangery, the triumph of the building is 
its association with Victoria. It was there that on May 24, 
1819, she was born ; and there that she was sleeping when 
in the small hours of June 20, 1837, the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain awakened her to 
hail her queen — and " I will be good," she said, very pret- 
tily, and kept her word. Both these historic rooms — the 
room where she was bom and the room where she slept — 
you may enter. Her toys you may see too, her dolls' house 
and her dolls, dear objects to the maternal sightseer, and 
also her series of amazingly minute official uniforms, to- 
gether with pictures of herself, her ancestors and children, 
in great numbers. And from the windows you may look 
towards London down the long vista over the Round Pond 



250 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

and across the Serpentine, and see nothing of it at all save 
Hyde Park Corner, and that only on a very clear day : or 
looking within, you may see the very beautiful Clock Court- 
yard of the Palace, which otherwise is invisible to the public. 

The Palace is principally Wren's work and is staid and 
comely save for a top hamper of stone on the south fagade 
which always troubles my eye. But the little old houses 
north of the main building on the west are quite charming 
and may be taken as a collyrium. Of the charm of these 
and many of Kensington's older houses and some of its new 
I have spoken in the first chapter : although I said nothing 
there in praise of the Princess Beatrice's stables, which are 
exquisitely proportioned and always give me a new pleasure. 

An even rarer possession of Kensington is Holland 
House, which stands half way up the hill and may be seen 
dimly through the trees from the main road and, hiding 
behind its cedar, more or less intimately through the iron 
gates in Holland Walk. Holland House is the nearest 
country mansion to London ; while in the country itself 
are none superior in the picturesque massing of red brick 
and green copper, and none stored more richly with great 
memories. It was built in 1607: James the First stayed 
there in 1612; in 1647 Cromwell and Fairfax walked up 
and down in the meadow before the house discussing ques- 
tions of state; William Penn lived there; Addison died 
there, exhibiting his fortitude in extremis to the dissolute 
Earl of Warwick. At last the house came to Henry Fox, 
Lord Holland, father of Charles James Fox and grand- 
father of the famous Lord Holland, the third, who made it 
a centre of political and literary activity and who now sits 
in his chair in bronze, under the trees close to the high 
road, for all the world to see. A statue of Charles James 
Fox stands nearer the house. 



MACAULAY SPEAKS 251 

Of the great days of Holland House less than a hundred 
years ago let the occupant of the neighbouring Holly Lodge 
tell — in one of his fine flowing urbane periods : — " The 
time is coming when perhaps a few old men, the last sur- 
vivors of our generation, will in vain seek amidst new 
streets and squares and railway stations for the site of that 
dwelling which was in their youth the favourite resort of 
wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, phi- 
losophers and statesmen. They will then remember with 
strange tenderness many objects once familiar to them, the 
avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings, the 
carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. 
With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable 
chamber in which all the antique gravity of a college li- 
brary was so singularly blended with all that female grace 
and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They 
will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the 
varied learning of many lands and many ages, and those 
portraits in which were preserved the features of the best 
and wisest Englishhaen of two generations. They will 
recollect how many men who have guided the politics of 
Europe, who have moved great assemblies by reason and 
eloquence, who have put life into bronze and canvas, or 
who have left to posterity things so written as it shall not 
willingly let them die, were then mixed with all that was 
loveliest and gayest in the society of the most splendid of 
capitals. They will remember the peculiar character 
which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and 
accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They 
will remember how the last debate was discussed in one 
corner, and the last comedy of Scribe in another: while 
Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Sir Joshua's 
Baretti, while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas 



252 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

to verify a quotation: while Talleyrand related his con- 
versations with Barras at the Luxembourg, or his ride 
with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. They will re- 
member, above all, the grace and the kindness, far more 
admirable than grace, with which the princely hospitality 
of that ancient mansion was dispensed." 

Within Holland House I have never set foot, but I know 
its gardens — English and Dutch and Japanese — and I 
know how beautiful they are, and when one is in them how 
incredible it seems that London is only just across the way, 
so to speak. 

A little west of Holland Park, in Holland Park Road, is 
Leighton House, the stately home of the late Lord Leigh- 
ton, which has been made over to the people as a permanent 
memorial of the artist. Here one may see his Moorish hall 
and certain personal relics, and some of his very beautiful 
drawings and water colour sketches of Greece and the 
southern seas. Exhibitions of pictures are from time to 
time held here. In Melbury Road, until recently, might 
be seen on Sunday afternoons a little collection of the 
paintings of G. F. Watts, but these are now dispersed. In 
Lisgar Terrace, however, a few minutes farther west, is the 
Garden Studio of the late Sir Edward Burne- Jones, the 
friend and contemporary of these artists, where a number 
of his drawings and paintings are permanently preserved, 
to be seen on certain days by anyone who presents a visit- 
ing-card. Here are the studies for many famous pictures, 
here are pencil sketches, and a few unfinished works. No 
modern had so sensitive a pencil as this master, and the 
Garden Studio should be sought for its drawings alone, 
apart from its other treasures. 

To pass from the true Kensington to South Kensington 
is to leave silver for gold. South Kensington is all wealth 
and masonry. Here are houses at a thousand a year and 



MODEL BUILDINGS 253 

buildings that assault the heavens. The Albert Memorial 
is the first of a long chain of ambitious edifices so closely 
packed together as to suggest that they are models in a 
show yard and if you have the courage you may order 
others like them. Albert Memorial, Albert Hall, the 
Imperial Institute, the Royal College of Music, the Natural 
History Museum, the School of Science and Art, the Vic- 
toria and Albert Museum, Brompton Oratory — these, to- 
gether with enormous blocks of flats, almost touch each 
other: a model memorial, a model concert hall, model 
museums, model flats, model institutes, and so forth. Any 
pattern copied at the shortest notice. Not that there has 
been much haste at South Kensington ; but what can you 
expect when the name of the contracting firm has so dolce 
far niente a sound as HoUiday and Greenwood ? 

By the way, the groups of statuary at the four corners 
of the base of the Albert Memorial, symbolising Europe, 
Asia, Africa and America, always seem to me very felicitous 
and attractive. The bison and the cow, the elephant and 
the camel, are among the kindliest animals that stone ever 
shaped. I have an artist friend who wishes to treat the 
Round Pond in a similar spirit, and set up groups to cele- 
brate Grimm and Andersen and Kate Greenaway and 
Lewis Carroll — since the Round Pond is the children's 
Mediterranean. A very pretty project it seems to me ; too 
pretty ever to be carried out. 

One thinks of the Victoria and Albert Museum as the 
Museum at the corner of Exhibition Road and the Crom- 
well Road only: but that is only the Art Museum. The 
Museum extends into the Imperial Institute, where one 
may walk for miles, as it seems, among the wonders of the 
East. I cannot describe these riches : all I can say is that 
India, China, Japan, Persia, Egypt and Turkey have given 



254 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

of their best — in pottery and carving, glass and porcelain, 
embroidery and tapestry, bronze and jade. But nothing 
is to my imagination more interesting and quickening than 
the first thing that one sees on entering the east door in 
Imperial Institute Road — the faQade of two houses in teak 
from Ahmadabad in Gujarat. This is old domestic India 
at a blow. They are wonderful : nothing else in the ex- 
hibition is so unexpected. 

One passes on to blue tiles, models of natives, a minia- 
ture Juggernaut, the gold throne of Ranjit Singh, precious 
metal work, blue and purple Palma glass, bold Multan 
pottery, Damascus ware, Rhodian ware, a blue-tiled fire- 
place from the palace of Fuyad Pasha at Constantinople, 
Turkish embroideries and Persian brocades so lovely as 
to make it ridiculous for new patterns to be devised at 
all, a praying carpet woven in 1540 for the Mosque at 
Ardebil, a Chinese flower bowl of blue glass so beautiful 
that one is dumb before it, a model of a Chinese villa, 
all gaiety and delight, given by the Sacred Emperor to 
poor Josephine Beauharnais : netsukds, lacquer and prints. 
After this we come to science : biology, chemistry, physics, 
astronomy ; which bring us footsore and weary to the east 
entrance. 

We then cross Imperial Institute Road and enter the 
Southern Galleries and are at once among Frank Buck- 
land's fishes — fishes in spirits and fishes in plaster, live 
fishes and nets. These are perhaps an acquired taste. 
Shipping exhibits follow, and we see the Royal State Barge 
which was built for James I and last used ofiicially on the 
Thames in 1849. Twenty-one men row it and it is sixty- 
three feet long. In this room also is a very interesting and 
beautiful carved brick gateway from the school at Enfield 
where Keats was educated ; and this, with the barge, is the 



HEART-BREAKING BARGAINS 255 

last human thing we shall see for some miles, the rest being 
models of machinery. 

We then cross Exliibition Road to the Art Museum and 
prepare for real pleasure once more : for this is one of the 
most fascinating museums in the world — filled with beauty 
and humanity. Not a mummy in it, not a South Sea 
trophy, not a fossil. It is all friendly and all interesting. 
It is also most shamefully huddled, but the new building 
will be ready soon and then one will be able to see as a 
whole many things that now one can examine only part by 
part. It is South Kensington's mission to instruct England 
in domestic beauty. Everything that is most beautiful 
and wonderful in architecture and furniture, sculpture and 
metal work, jewellery and embroidery, pottery and glass, 
may here be studied either in the original or in facsimile. 
The best goldsmith's work in the world is here in electro- 
type, the best sculpture in casts. The Venus of Milo is 
here, and the Laocoon, the Elgin Fates, the Marble Faun, 
Michael Angelo's David: everything famous except the 
winged victory of Samothrace; I have not found that. 

It is of course impossible to write of any museum ade- 
quately, even in a whole volume, and I have but a few 
pages. But this I can say, that there are at South Kensing- 
ton original works of decorative art — carvings, enamels, 
lace, pottery, metal vessels, sculpture, glass — before which 
one can only stand entranced, so beautiful are they. The 
lace and embroidery alone are worth a long journey. The 
Delia Robbias are worth a longer. The Museum further- 
more is made the despair of every collector by the custom — 
a very interesting one and a very valuable one — but often 
devastating in its triumph — of appending to every treasure 
the price that was paid for it. Some are high; but the 
bargains ! The bargains are heart-breaking. 



256 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Not the least interesting room is that filled entirely by 
cases of porcelain and other treasures lent by Mr. George 
Salting. We have seen some of Mr. Salting's pictures at 
the National Gallery : here is a further taste of his quality 
not only as a man of taste and generosity but as an eccentric 
too. Mr. Salting seems to me one of the most remarkable 
men now living. He taxes my imagination to the utmost 

— I am too selfish to understand him. I cannot under- 
stand how a man who owns some of the blue china at 
South Kensington, or, at the National Gallery, Ridolfo del 
Ghirlandaio's portrait of an old gentleman, can bring him- 
self to live without them. This is what I call Christianity 

— to forego such joys oneself and invite others to expe- 
rience them. Mr. Salting's collection of porcelain alone 
stamps him a master. His one case of snuff bottles has 
more beauty of colour in it than it falls to the lot of an 
ordinary man to see in a lifetime. 

To name a few things that I particularly remember is a 
pleasure that I feel entitled to. One comes first to wood 
carving and furniture, and here one may see a wonderful 
Mary the Mother of Jesus with Cleophas by Tylman Rie- 
menschneider of Wurzburg; a Virgin and Child in box- 
wood in the manner of Martin Schongauer ; and a Stoning 
of St. Stephen by Grinling Gibbons : all of which however 
are transcended in marvellousness by the Crucifixion and 
Nativity in pear wood by Giovanni and Lucio Otiventono 
in the Italian Court. Here also are oak dressers, pewter 
plates, a beautiful lead cistern (^10) and the state chariot 
of George III. A gallery of stained glass, more furniture 
and sculpture and musical instruments leads to the Lord 
President's Court, where goldsmith's work and lace, em- 
broidery and porcelain, ivories and jewels may be seen, and 
so to the Italian Court, where the Delia Robbias and Dona- 



RAPHAEL'S CARTOONS 257 

tellos and other beautiful reliefs are, and in which one 
could linger for days. 

From here one may go upstairs to the iron work and 
enamels and the pictures. To the pictures I come later: 
I would prefer now to retrace our steps on the ground floor 
to the architectural rooms, where casts of so many beautiful 
tombs and sculptures may be seen — Michael Angelo's 
David dominating all. Here also are his Lorenzo de' 
Medici, his Guiliano de' Medici, his Junius Brutus, his two 
Slaves, his Moses, his Virgin and Child, and the two lovely 
bas-reliefs, one of which in the original lends glory to our 
Diploma Gallery. Here also is the cast of the tomb of 
Beatrice d'Este in the Certosa at Pavia, of the Schreyer 
monument at Nuremberg, the Ernst monument at Mag- 
deburg, Sir Francis Vere's tomb in the Abbey. I name 
only a few. No room so badly needs enlarging as does this. 

South Kensington, in addition to its own water colour 
collection and its Raphael cartoons, has had many valuable 
bequests, chief among them being the Dyce and Forster 
books, MSS. and pictures, the Sheepshanks collection of 
British paintings, the Jones bequest, the lonides bequest, 
and the Constable sketches given by Miss Isabel Constable. 
These, with its wonderful Art Library (which is open to 
the public), its representative water colours, and its collec- 
tions of etchings and Japanese prints, make it a Mecca of 
the art student and connoisseur of painting. 

When it comes to value I suppose that the Raphael 
cartoons are worth all the rest of the Museum put to- 
gether. To me, as I have said, they are finer than any- 
thing of his at the National Gallery, and by the possession 
of them London, for all its dirt, can defy Rome and 
Florence and Paris. They have the Laocoon and the 
David and the Venus of Milo : we have the Elgin Marbles, 



258 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

and Leonardo's "Holy Family," and the Raphael car- 
toons. 

After Raphael it is to South Kensington pre-eminently 
that one must go to study the history of English vt^ater 
colour painting ; but I must confess to some sadness in the 
proceeding. The transitoriness of water colour has a 
depressing effect. Standing before a great oil painting of 
the remote past, a Velasquez, for example, a Rembrandt, 
or a Leonardo, one thinks only of the picture. But an 
old water colour painting makes me think of the dead 
artist. Velasquez might be living now for all the impres- 
sion of decay that his work brings: but David Cox is 
beyond question in the grave. To pass from room to room 
at South Kensington among these fading pictures is to be- 
come very gloomy, very tired. Better to look at the work 
only of one or two men and then pass to something else — 
Bonington for example. There is no sense of decay about 
Bonington's water colours. His "Verona" is one of 
the great things here. Nor is there any sense of decay 
about WilUam James Miiller, another great artist who 
died young and whose " Eastern Burial Ground " and 
"Venice" no one should miss. The harvesting scenes of 
Peter de Wint, a few David Coxes, John Varley's " Moel 
Hebog," Callow's "Leaning Tower of Bologna" and a 
view of the South Downs by Copley Fielding — these also 
stand out in one's memory as great feats. Many Turners 
are here too, but for Turner's water colours the basement 
of the National Gallery is the place. 

The Constable room is another of South Kensington's 
unique treasures. I would not say that his best work is 
here : but he never painted anything, however hurriedly, 
that had not greatness in it, and some of these sketches 
are Titanic. It is necessary to visit South Kensington if 



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JOHN CONSTABLE 259 

one would know this painter thoroughly — his power over 
weather, his mileage, his trees and valleys, his clouds and 
light. There is a little sketch here called " Spring " which 
I associate in my mind with the "Printemps" of Rousseau 
at the Thomy-Thierry Collection in the Louvre : they are 
wholly different, yet each is final. There is a fishing boat 
here on Brighton Beach which could not be finer. And 
the many sketches of Dedham Vale (Constable's Fontaine- 
bleau) are all wonderful. You may see here his gift of 
finding beauty where he was. He did not need to travel 
over land and sea: while other painters were seeking 
Spain and Italy, Constable was extracting divinity from 
Hampstead Heath, compelling the Vale of Health to tell 
him its secret. 

The Sheepshanks Collection of works by late Georgian 
and Victorian painters is interesting for its fine examples of 
less known masters as well as its famous works. In addition 
to Turner's " Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes," a scene of 
golden splendour, five lovely Wilsons, two spacious and 
glorious landscapes by Peter de Wint, among the finest 
landscapes ever painted in England, three excellent Mor- 
lands, another divine view of Mousehold Heath by Old 
Crome, Gainsborough's beautiful " Queen Charlotte," and 
representative examples of the anecdotal school, Leshe and 
Webster and Landseer, the collection has an exquisite view 
of the Thames from Somerset House by Paul Sandby, three 
very interesting Ibbetsons, a good David Roberts, a Henry 
Dawson, very Wilsonic, a George Smith of Chichester, two 
William Collins' and a Joshua Shaw. 

The Jones Bequest, which fills a long gallery, is a kind of 
minor Wallace Collection — pictures, miniatures and furni- 
ture, with a florid French tendency. Among the pictures 
are water colours by Turner and Copley Fielding, two 



260 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

beautiful Guardis opposite a rather similar Wilson, who in 
his turn is brought to one's mind by a George Smith of 
Chichester, a rich autumnal John Linnell, a Reynolds, 
a Gainsborough, a charming Vanloo — children playing 
musical instruments — and some interesting Tudor por- 
traits, including Henry VIII, probably by Holbein, and 
Mary Queen of Scots. 

To get the full value of the Dyce and Forster pictures 
one must be more interested in the history of the stage 
than I am ; but here and there among them is something 
great with a more general appeal, such as Sir Joshua's 
portrait of himself. In one of the cases are some very 
human relics in the shape of the original MSS. of Dombey 
and Son, Bleak House, Oliver Twist and other of Dickens' 
novels, including Edwin Drood, which is open at the last 
page as his hand left it on the day he was stricken down to 
write no more. In another case is a sonnet of Keats, and 
in a further room Joseph Severn's charcoal drawing of the 
poet's head, in Rome, just before his death. 

Quite recently the nation inherited the very interesting 
collection of oil paintings, drawings and etchings formed by 
the late Constantine Alexander lonides, one of England's 
wealthy Greek residents. These treasures are now to be 
seen at South Kensington, where they fill two rooms. A 
small collection representing the good taste of one humane 
connoisseur offers perhaps the perfect conditions to the 
lover of art: and these we have in the lonides bequest. 
The paintings are in one room, the drawings and engrav- 
ings in the other, in the centre of which is a screen wholly 
given to the burin and needle of Rembrandt of the Rhine, 
the greatest master that ever forced copper to his will. 
A visitor to London bent upon the study of Rembrandt's 
etchings would go naturally to the Print Room of the 



REMBRANDT 261 

British Museum ; but they have there no better impressions 
than some of these that Mr. lonides brought together. 
The record of one of the most astonishing achievements in 
the history of man is unfolded as one turns the pages of 
this central screen, for, after Shakespeare (who died when 
the great artist was ten), no human imagination has created 
so much of human character as Rembrandt of the Rhine. 
Here we are looking at only a portion of his work — his 
etchings : but words fail one to put the right epithets even 
to these. And there remains the work with the brush ! 
Here is a second state of the "Hundred Guelder-piece," 
" Christ Healing the Sick," and close by it a fourth state of 
that amazing work " Our Lord Before Pilate" : here too in 
perfect condition are the portraits of gentlemen by a gentle- 
man — the "Young Haaring," the "Ephraim Bonus," the 
"John Asselyn," the "Burgomaster Jan Six" at his win- 
dow, and the etcher himself at work with a pencil. Mr. 
lonides' interest in etching extended to living masters too — 
here are Whistler and Legros, Strang and Rodin. Parti- 
cularly here is Millet, with his " Gleaners," his "Shepherd- 
ess Knitting," and other examples of simplicity and sin- 
cerity and power. And though the locus classicus for 
Flaxman is University College in Gower Street, the lonides 
Flaxmans should be asked for particularly, and also his 
collection of drawings by Alphonse Legros, one of the most 
illustrious of our French adopted sons, whose home has 
been in England for many years, but whose genius is still 
far too much a matter of the coterie. 

The first painting to take the eye as one enters the second 
lonides room is Bonington's " Quay " on the screen — 
an exquisite thing. Of Bonington one can never see too 
much, and here also is his oil painting of "La Place 
des Molards, Geneva" injured by its very common gilt 



^6^ A WANDERER IN LONDON 

frame. (Like so many of the best pictures, it does not 
want gilt at all.) On other screens, which are given up 
to water colours, are drawings by that great master Henri 
Daumier, too little of whose work is accessible to the 
English picture lover. There are thirteen in all, of which 
the "Wayside Railway Station" is perhaps the greatest, 
and "The Print Collector," which it is amusing to compare 
with Meissonier's at the Wallace Collection, the most 
finished. Another fascinating drawing is a sketch of 
Antwerp by Hervier, a French artist of much accomplish- 
ment and charm who is also too little known in England. 
I mention the oil paintings as they occur in the rather 
confusing catalogue, where the advantages both of alpha- 
betical and numerical arrangement are equally disdained 
in favour of a labyrinthine scheme of division into nation- 
alities and sub-divisions into oil and water colour and 
engravings. Guardi, whom we saw to such advantage at 
the Wallace Collection, has here a decorative treatment 
of a fair in the Piazza of St. Mark at Venice (No. 101), 
with a sky above it of profound blue. One of the most 
charming of the old Dutch pictures is a landscape by 
Philip de Koninck (No. 86) which is, I think, the best work 
by him that I have seen; while of the new Dutch ex- 
amples there is a beautiful little hay wagon by Matthew 
Maris (No. 90). The brothers Antoine and Louis Le 
Nain, of whom very few examples are to be found in 
England, have two pictures here, very curious and modern 
when one realises that they are nearly three hundred years 
old (Nos. 17 and 18). Corot is not quite at his best in 
either of his two pictures, although both are beautiful, 
but Courbet's " Immensite " (No. 59) — sea and sand at 
sunset — is wonderful. Courbet was always great. Diaz' 
"Baigneuse" (No. 60) is as he alone could have painted 





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MRS. COLMANN 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY ALFRED STEVENS IN THE TATE GALLERY 



THE SWALLOW PROBLEM 263 

it, and Georges Michel, another French painter whose 
appearance on Enghsh walls is too infrequent, has a beauti- 
ful " Mill " (No. 67) that might have been derived direct 
from Constable and Linnell, yet is individual too. Millet's 
great picture here, "The Wood Sawyers" (No. 47), I do 
not much like : it has the air of being painted to be sold ; 
but the other three are very interesting, especially perhaps 
the "Landscape" (No. 172) in the manner of Corot. 
Rousseau's spreading Fontainebleau tree (No. 54) is per- 
haps the flower of the Barbizon contribution. 

The National History Museum is a Museum in the 
fullest sense of the word : almost everything in it is stuffed. 
But its interest cannot be exaggerated. Life was never 
so tactfully, prettily and successfully counterfeited as it 
is in the galleries on the ground floor, just to the left of 
the entrance, which contain the cases of British birds with 
their nests. It needs no learning in ornithology, no 
scientific taste, to appreciate these beautiful cases, where 
everything that can be done has been done to ensure 
realism — even to the sawing down of a tree to obtain a 
titmouse's nest in one of its branches. Here you may 
see how sand martins arrange their colonies, and here 
peep into the nest of the swallows beneath the eaves ; but 
as to whether Mr. Barrie is right in thinking that they 
build there in order to hear fairy stories, or Hans Andersen 
is right in holding that their intention is to tell them, 
the catalogue says nothing. The Museum takes all nature 
for its province — from whales to humming birds, a case 
of which occurs charmingly at every turn: from extinct 
mammoths to gnats, which it enlarges in wax twenty- 
eight times — to the size of a creature in one of Mr. Wells' 
terrible books — in order that the student may make no 
mistake. 



264 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Perhaps the most interesting gallery in the whole build- 
ing is that on the third floor devoted to men and apes, which 
illustrates not only the Darwinian theory (there is a statue 
of Darwin on the stairs) but also the indecency of science, 
for surely it is something worse than bad manners thus to 
expose the skulls of gentlemen and monkeys. The gentle- 
men it is true are for the most part foreigners and heathen ; 
but none the less I came away with a disagreeable feeling 
that the godhead had been tarnished. The most inter- 
esting single case in the Museum is perhaps that in the great 
hall illustrating " Mimicry," where you may see butterflies 
so like leaves that you do not see them: caterpillars like 
twigs : and moths like lichen. Between these and the 
extinct monster, the Diplodocus-Carnegii — which is as 
long as an excursion train and seems to have been equally 
compounded of giraffe, elephant and crocodile, all stretched 
to breaking point — one can acquire, in the Cromwell Road 
Museum, some faint idea of the resource, ingenuity and 
insoluble purposes of Nature. 



CHAPTER XIX 

CHELSEA AND THE RIVER 

Beautiful Chelsea — Turner's Last Days — St. Luke's — Church Street 

— Cheyne Row's Philosopher — The Carlyles and an Intrusion — 
Don Saltero's — The Publican and the Museum — Rossetti's breakfast 

— The Physick Garden — The Royal Hospital — The Pensioners' 
coats — London's disregard of its river — The Gulls — Speed — 
Whistler and the Thames again — The National Gallery of British 
Art — "Every picture tells a Story" — Old Favourites — Great 
English Painters — The New Turners — Watts and Millais — The 
Chantrey Bequest — A Sea-piece — Lambeth Palace 

CHELSEA has not allowed progress to injure it essen- 
tially. Although huge blocks of flats have arisen, 
and Rossetti's house at No. 16 Cheyne Walk has been re- 
built and refaced, and some very strange architectural 
freaks may be observed in the neighbourhood of No. 73 
(fantastic challenges to the good taste of the older houses 
in the Walk), the Embankment still retains much of its old 
character and charm. London has no more attractive 
sight than Cheyne Walk in spring, when the leaves are a 
tender green and through them you see the grave red bricks 
and white window frames of these Anne and Georgian 
houses, as satisfactory and restful as those of the Keizers- 
gracht in Amsterdam. 

The Walk has had famous inhabitants. To the far 
western end (at No. 119) Turner retreated in his old age; 

and here he lived alone as Mr. Booth, — or, as the neigh- 

265 



266 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

hours called him, Admiral Booth, deeming him a retired 
sailor — hoping never to be found by his friends again, and 
it is here that, huddled in a dressing-gown, he would climb 
to the roof at day-break to watch the sun rise. And here 
he died in 1851, aged nearly eighty. Sir Thomas More, 
whose house stood where Beaufort Row now is — to the 
west of Battersea Bridge — still lends his name to the 
neighbourhood; while his body rests in Chelsea Old 
Church, as St. Luke's is called — a grave solid building 
of red brick and stone, with a noble square tower on which 
a sundial and a clock dwell side by side, not perhaps in 
perfect agreement but certainly in amity. More's wife 
Joan is also buried here; and here lie the mother of 
Fletcher the dramatist, and the mother of George Herbert 
the divine poet, whose funeral sermon was preached in 
the church by Dr. Donne, and listened to by the biographer 
both of her son and of her celebrant — Izaak Walton. 

Church Street, Chelsea, should be explored by anyone 
who is interested in quaint small houses, beginning with a 
fine piece of square Anne work in the shape of a free school 
that appears now to be deserted and decaying. Swift, 
Arbuthnot and Atterbury all lived in Church Street for a 
while. 

Cheyne Row, close by on the east, is made famous by 
the house — No. 5 — in which Carlyle lived from 1834 
until 1881, there writing his French Revolution and Fred- 
erick the Great, and there smoking with Tennyson and 
FitzGerald. Private piety has preserved this house as a 
place of pilgrimage. It is certainly very interesting to see 
the double-walled study where the philosopher wrote, and to 
realise that it was by this kitchen fire that he sat with 
Tennyson; to look over his books and peer at his pipes 
and letters and portraits; and yet I had a feeling of in- 



BONIFACE AS COLLECTOR 267 

discretion the while. If there is any man's wash-hand- 
stand and bath, any woman's bed and chair, that I feel 
there is no need for me or the public generally to see, they 
are Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle's. I seemed to hear both of 
them distilling suitable epithets. It is not as if one could 
read the books or examine the letters : everything is under 
lock and key. There the house is, however, exactly as it 
was left, and better a thousand times that it should be a 
show for the curious than that it should be pulled down. 
And at any rate it contains Carlyle's death mask and a 
cast of his hands after death — very characteristic hands ; 
and his walking stick is on the wall. 

The famous Don Saltero's Museum was at 18 Cheyne 
Walk. It is now no more ; and where are its curiosities ? 
Where ? Saltero was one Salter, a barber, who opened a 
coffee house here in 1695 and relied on his collection of 
oddities to draw custom. It was a sound device and should 
be followed. (All innkeepers should display a few curio- 
sities : and indeed a few do. I know of one at Feltham in 
Sussex, and another in Camden Town ; while it was in an 
East Grinstead hostel that I saw Dr. Johnson's chair from 
the Essex Head. At Dirty Dick's in Bishopsgate Street 
are a few ancient relics, and Henekey's, by Gray's Inn, has 
an old lantern or so. But the innkeeper is not as a rule 
alive to his opportunities.) At the end of the eighteenth 
century Don Saltero's collection was dispersed. Chelsea in 
those days was famous also for its buns and its china. It 
makes neither now. Why is it that these industries de- 
cay ? Why is it that one seems to be always too late ? 

It was at No. 16 Cheyne Walk that Rossetti lived, and 
it was here that Mr. Meredith was to have joined him, and 
would have done so but for that dreadful vision, on a bright 
May morning at noon, of the poet's breakfast — rashers 



268 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

cold and stiff, and two poached eggs slowly bleeding to 
death on them. In the garden at the back Rossetti kept 
his wild beasts. At No. 4 died Daniel Maclise, and, later, 
George Eliot. Passing the row of wealthy houses of 
which old Swan House and Clock House are the most 
desirable, we come to the Botanic Garden of the Royal 
Society of Apothecaries, with its trim walks and bewigged 
statue of Sir Hans Sloane in the midst. Here Linnaeus 
himself once strolled ; but we cannot do the same, for the 
Physick Garden, as it used to be called, is private: yet 
one may peep through its gate in Swan Walk for another 
view of it — Swan Walk, whose square houses of an earlier 
day are among the most attractive in London. 

Close by, however, are the Royal Hospital's gardens, 
which are free to all and constitute Chelsea and Pimlico's 
public park, filled, whenever the sun is out, with children 
at play. The Hospital itself, which a pleasant tradition 
ascribes to Nell Gwynn's kindly impulse but history credits 
to Charles the Second (his one wise deed perhaps), is 
Wren's most considerable non-ecclesiastical building in 
London. One would not ask it to be altered in any re- 
spect, such dignity and good sense has it; while the sub- 
sidiary buildings — officers' quarters and so forth — have 
charm too, with their satisfying proportions and pretty 
dormer windows. To be taken round the great hall by an 
old Irish sergeant is a very interesting experience : past the 
rows of tables where little groups of veterans, nearly all of 
them bearded, and all, without exception, smoking, are 
playing cards or bagatelle or reading, one of them now 
and then rising to hobble to the fire for a light for his 
pipe, over their heads hanging the flags won from a 
hundred battle-fields, and all around the walls portraits of 
great commanders. It is a noble hall. On the raised 



THE THAMES 269 

platform at the end is a collection of medals belonging to 
old Hospitallers who left no kin to claim these trophies, 
and portraits, among them one of the Iron Duke, who lay 
here in state after his death, on a table which is still held 
sacred. In the chapel are more flags. The old soldiers 
are a more picturesque sight in summer than winter, for 
in winter their coats are dark blue, but in summer bright 
scarlet, and these very cheerfully light up the neighbour- 
ing streets and the grave precincts of their home. 

In an earlier chapter I have said something of Whistler's 
discovery of the river at Chelsea. Certainly it is here that 
the urban Thames has most character. By London Bridge 
it is busier and more important and pretentious ; by the 
Embankment it is more formal and well behaved; but at 
Chelsea it is at its best: without the fuss and the many 
bridges of its city course ; without the prettiness and flan- 
nels of its country course : open, mysterious, and always 
beautiful with the beauty of gravity. 

The Thames never seems to me to belong to London as 
it should. It is in London, but it is not part of London's 
life. We walk beside it as little as possible ; we cross it 
hurriedly without throwing it more than a glance; we 
rarely venture on it. London in fact takes the Thames 
for granted, just as it takes its great men. If it led any- 
where it might be more popular; but it does not. It can 
carry but few people home, and those are in too much of a 
hurry to use it; nor can it take us to the theatre or the 
music hall. That is why a service of Thames steamers 
will never pay. No one fishes in it from the sides, as Pari- 
sian idlers fish in the Seine ; no one rows on it for pleasure ; 
no one, as I have already said, haunts its banks in the 
search for old books and prints. Our river is not interest- 
ing to us : its Strand, one of our most crowded streets, has 



270 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

to be a hundred yards inland to become popular. We do 
not even with any frequency jump into the Thames to 
end our woes. Living and dying we avoid it. 

The only non-utilitarian purpose to which we put the 
river is to feed the gulls from its bridges. During the past 
few years the feeding of these strange visitants has become 
quite a cult, so much so that on Sundays the boys do a 
roaring trade with penny bags of sprats. There is a fas- 
cination in watching these strong wilful birds with the 
cruel predatory eye and the divinely pure plumage as they 
swoop and soar, dart and leap, after a crumb or a fish. 
Every moment more gulls come and more, materialised 
out of nowhere, until the air just seethes with beating 
wings and snapping beaks. In summer they find food 
enough on the seashore: it is only in winter that they 
come up the Thames in any numbers for London's refuse 
and charity. 

When walking from Chelsea towards Westminster one 
day in the early spring of this year I saw these gulls at rest. 
They were on the shore of the Battersea side (somewhere 
near the spot where Colonel Blood hid in the rushes to 
shoot Charles II as he bathed) — hundreds strong, beauti- 
ful white things against the grey mud. It was a fine after- 
noon and the sun made their whiteness still more radiant. 

While I was standing watching them, and realising how 
beautiful the Chelsea river is, I was once again struck by 
the impression of great speed which one can get from river 
traffic moving at really quite a low rate. A tug came by 
drawing three or four empty barges. Until this invasion 
of unrest set in the river had been a perfect calm — not a 
movement on the surface, nothing but green water and 
blue sky, and the gulls, and Battersea Park's silent and 
naked trees. Suddenly this irruption. The tug was 



WHISTLER AGAIN 271 

making perhaps twelve knots (I have no means of judging) 
but the effect was of terrific swiftness. She seemed with 
her attendant barges to flash past. I imagine the narrow- 
ness of the river to have something to do with this illusion, 
because at sea, where a much higher rate is attained, there 
is no sense of speed at all. (It is true that steamers which 
were as far apart as the eye could reach a few minutes ago 
will meet and leave each other in an incredibly short space 
of time ; but the impression then filling the mind is not so 
much of the speed of the boats as of the mysterious defeat 
of distance.) And the quality of the speed of this tug 
boat had nothing of brutality or insolence in it, as a motor 
car has : it had gaiety, mirth, a kind of cheery impudence. 
It soothed as well as astonished. 

On the same afternoon I was minded to enter the Tate 
Gallery just to look at Whistler's exquisite nocturne of old 
Battersea Bridge, which is the perfect adaptation to an 
English subject of the methods of the Japanese print and 
conveys the blue mystery of a London night on the river 
as no other painter has ever done. I have seen all Whist- 
ler's work : I have seen his portrait of his mother, and his 
portrait of Carlyle, and his portrait of Miss Alexander. 
I have seen his wonderful waves and his decorations for the 
Peacock Room. I have seen his Princesse de la Pays du 
Chrysantheme and his Connie Gilchrist ; his etchings (the 
Black Lion Wharf stands before me as I write) and his 
Songs on Stone ; and masterly as it all is, I believe that his 
London river pictures are his finest work — are the work he 
was born to do above all other men. In his portraits 
artifice is visible as well as art ; in his best river scenes art 
conquers artifice. 

The Tate Gallery is in forlorn and depressing Pimlico, 
on the river boundary of that decayed district, just beyond 



272 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Vauxhall Bridge, which for so long has been closed, and 
hard by that yard of ruined ships whose logs warm so many 
Londoners and whose historic figure-heads thrill so many 
boys. At the National Gallery of British Art (known 
familiarly as the Tate Gallery), where the Chantrey Bequest 
purchases are hung and where many pictures that used to 
be in Trafalgar Square are now permanently preserved, 
may be studied Landseer and E. M. Ward, Frith and 
Leslie, Webster and Mulready, Eastlake and Egg, and all 
the other nineteenth century masters of technique without 
temperament, together with a few who had temperament 
in abundance, such as Constable and Bonington, Rossetti 
and Alfred Stevens and Burne-Jones. Also Mr. Sargent, 
who is still in his prime and to whose exquisite " Carnation 
Lily, Lily, Rose," has recently been added his sumptuous 
portrait of Ellen Terry. 

Those rooms of the Tate Gallery that have been filled 
from the National Gallery (which relinquished a large por- 
tion of its British paintings) are the most important and 
valuable ; for the rest, it is rather as though a procession of 
old Academies had filed through, three or four pictures 
dropping out from each and remaining prisoner. If the 
Tate Gallery has very little painting that can be called 
great, as one can use the word in the National Gallery, its art 
is far more homely and companionable than the greatest. 
Every picture tells a story and puts forth a friendly hand ; 
and that means a deal in England, where we care little for 
art and much for anecdote and sentiment. What particu- 
larly strikes one in the older rooms is the familiarity of the 
pictures. To come upon Wilkie's " John Knox " and 
"Parish Beadle," Webster's "Truant," Leslie's "Uncle 
Toby and the Widow Wadman," Frith's "Derby Day," 
Landseer's "Peace" and "War" and "Member of the 



CONSTABLE AGAIN 273 

Humane Society," Walker's "Harbour of Refuge," Rosa 
Bonheur's "Horse Fair," and Maclise's "Play Scene" in 
Hamlet — to come upon these in the original after having 
been brought up among engravings of them is to experi- 
ence a curious and very pleasurable shock. The Tate 
Gallery undoubtedly will always act as a renewer of youth. 

To see certain English painters at their best it is com- 
pulsory to visit it. There, for example, hangs Alfred 
Stevens' portrait of Mrs. Collmann (reproduced opposite 
page 262), one of the rare portraits by this rare artist. 
There is Rossetti's "Ecce Ancilla Domini." There is "A 
Street in Cairo" by William James Miiller, who died at 
thirty-three, and the "Harvest Moon," one of England's 
few great modern landscapes, by Cecil Lawson, who died 
at thirty-one, and the beautiful " Varenna Woods " of 
Frederic Lee Bridell, who died at thirty-two. What these 
men might have dome, who shall say ? At the Tate also 
are priceless works by painters who did reach their prime — 
Constable, who although represented only by sketches is 
again seen instantly to be a giant : look at the colour in Nos. 
1236 and 1237 in Room I, both views of Hampstead Heath 
— the colour, and the air, and the light in them, and the 
mileage too. And in No. 1245 in the same room, the 
" Church Porch at Bergholt," his native village in Suffolk, 
note again, as we noted at the National Gallery, the part he 
played as one of the fathers of the Barbizon School. Here 
also are John Linnell's "Windmill"; Madox Brown's 
" Christ washing Peter's Feet " (reproduced opposite 
page 240) and William Collins' "Prawn Catchers." 
Bonvin's "Village Green in France," which seems out of 
place here, serves to remind the visitor how poor London 
is in French Art. 

The Tate has lately acquired a new and wider reputa- 



274 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

tion, for there have just been added a number of paintings 
by Turner which for many years lay under dust in the 
vaults of the National Gallery. By the possession of these 
pictures, in which occasionally the greatest of all impres- 
sionists may be seen almost, if not quite, at his best, and 
always at his most interesting, the Gallery takes a higher 
rank than ever before. In one or two — in " The Evening 
Star " and " Waves breaking on a flat beach " — I think 
that Turner comes as nigh to pure beauty as in anything 
of his that I know. I would draw attention also to 
"Margate from the Sea," and "Hastings," and, studied 
from the proper distance, the "River Scene with Cattle." 
Of the extraordinary value of this collection there can be 
no question; and it is peculiarly interesting to come to 
it, as I did, direct from Turner's house in Cheyne Walk, 
where I had been thinking of the old man's last days and 
his passionate rapture in the rising of the sun over the 
river. Most of these pictures embody his attempts to 
translate some of that rapture into paint — once again to 
celebrate the orb whose light to him was life, religion, all. 

To the Tate Gallery one must go also for a full know- 
ledge of the work of George Frederick Watts, our English 
Titian: for he is represented there by no fewer than 
twenty-seven pictures — among them such favourites as 
" Love and Death " and " Love and Life " — which range 
in subject and treatment from the "Minotaur" (repro- 
duced on the opposite page), so sinister amid such beauty, 
to the vast "Dray Horses." Millais also may be studied 
here almost at his best, for here are his "Ophelia" and 
his " Vale of Rest " ; and here also is Burne-Jones' " King 
Cophetua and the Beggar" in all its wistful loveliness. 

Among the Chantrey pictures I would name particularly 
Mr. Orchardson's " Napoleon on the ' Bellerophon,' " Mr. 




THE MINOTAUR 

AFTER THE PICTURE BY G. F. WATTS IN THE TATE GALLERY 



LAMBETH PALACE 275 

Arnesby Brown's "Morning," Mr. Shannon's "Flower 
Girl" and Mr. Adrian Stokes' "Autumn in the Moun- 
tains." Vicat Cole's "Pool of London," though there is 
too much paint in the atmosphere, is a fine thing ; and no 
one should miss among the sculpture the mischief and 
grace of Mr. Onslow Ford's "Folly." And if the mission 
of art is to stimulate life at its best, or carry one's thoughts 
to life at its best, why, there is a picture at the Tate 
Gallery which perhaps is the finest art of all, for it paints 
the bravest life bravely. And that is the "Valparaiso" 
by Thomas Somerscales, a Chantrey purchase, in which a 
four-master, with every sail set and shining in the sun, 
ploughs her glorious way through a dark blue sea of in- 
describable buoyancy and brininess. This is the kind of 
picture that, were I wealthy enough, I would keep a room 
for in any house I owned, however I might collect Masters 
in the others. 

And so, following the river at its dreariest along Gros- 
venor Road, we come to Westminster; but I would like 
first to cross the suspension bridge and look at Lambeth 
Palace, secure in its serene antiquity, where the Archbishop 
of Canterbury lives. This one may do by inquiring for 
permission by letter to the Primate's chaplain. There is 
a little early Enghsh chapel here, dating from the thir- 
teenth century, which is one of the most beautiful things 
in London; and the cicerone is full of kindly interest in 
his visitors, and of a very attractive naive pleasure, ever 
being renewed, in his work as the exhibitor. The great 
names here are Boniface, who built the chapel, Chicheley, 
who built the tower, Howley, who built the residential 
portion and did much restoring, and such moderns as Tait 
and Benson, who beautified where they could. It was 
Archbishop Tait, for example, who set up the present 



276 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

windows, which follow in design those which Laud erected 
or amended, and which the Puritans broke on seeing, as 
they thought, popery in them. Laud also gave the 
screen, and from this Palace he went by barge — in the old 
stately manner of the primates — to his death. It seems 
to be a point of honour with the archbishops to leave 
some impress of their own personality on the Palace. 
Archbishop Benson's window in the little ante-room, or 
vestry, to the chapel could hardly be more charming ; and 
the inlaid marble floor to the altar with which the present 
Archbishop's name is associated is a very magnificent 
addition. 

Long rows of Archbishops painted by the best portrait 
painters of their day — Holbein, Van Dyck, Lely, Hogarth, 
Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough — hang on the walls of 
the dining hall; but the German tourist who was making 
the tour of the rooms at the time that I was would not look 
at them. All his eyes were for the Archbishop's silver, 
and in particular a crumb-scoop in the form of a trowel. 



CHAPTER XX AND LAST 

WESTMINSTER AND WHITEHALL 

Queen Anne's Gate and Mansions — The new Cathedral — The Inverted 
Footstool — Origins of street nannes — The Abbey — Writing on 
the Tombs — The Guides — Henry VII's Chapel — Cromwell's 
body — Waxworks — A window's vicissitudes — The Houses of 
Parliament — London's Police — Extinct Humour — London's 
street wit — Whitehall — Relics of Napoleon and Nelson — The 
Deadly Maxims — The End 

DESPITE the rebuilder Westminster is still very good 
to wander in, for it has the Abbey and the little old 
streets behind the Abbey, and St. James's Park, and Queen 
Anne's Gate, that most beautiful stronghold of eighteenth- 
century antiquity — while close by it, to emphasise its 
beauty and good taste, are Queen Anne's Mansions. I 
always think that one gets a sufficiently raw idea of the 
human rabbit-warren from the squares of paper and marks 
of stairs and floors and partitions that are revealed on the 
walls when a house is in course of demolition : a sight very 
common in London ; but I doubt if the impression of man's 
minuteness and gregariousness is so vivid as that conveyed 
by the spectacle of Queen Anne's Mansions by St. James's 
Park station — surely the ugliest block of buildings out of 
America, and beyond doubt the most aggressively populous. 
Westminster's architectural variety is by no means ex- 
hausted in the buildings I have named, for between the 
Army-and-Navy Stores and Victoria station (which I 
fancy is PimUco) is the wonderful new Byzantine Roman 

277 



278 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

Catholic Cathedral, a gigantic mass of elaborate brickwork 
which within is now merely the largest barn in England 
but will one day be lustrous with marble. It is character- 
istic of London methods that a building so ambitious and 
remarkable as this should have been packed into an en- 
closed space from which a sight of it as a whole from any 
point of view is impossible. Its presence here, in the very 
heart of flat-land, would be hardly less amazing to the sim- 
ple intelligence of George III. than was that of the apple 
within the dumpling. One is conscious that it is vast and 
domineering and intensely un-English, but of its total effect 
and of its proportions, whether good or bad, one knows 
nothing. The lofty tower is of course visible from all 
points. Sometimes it has mystery and sometimes not, the 
effect depending upon the amount of it that is disclosed. 
From Victoria station I have seen it through a slight haze 
wearing an unearthly magical beauty; and again from 
another point it has been merely a factory chimney with a 
desire for sublimity. 

Whatever opinion one may hold as to the architectural 
scheme of the new cathedral, there can be no doubt as to 
its nobility as sheer building, and no question of the splen- 
did courage behind its dimensions. It appears to me to 
conquer by vastness alone, and I seem to discern a certain 
grim humour in these people setting as near their old-time 
Westminster cathedral as might be this new and flaunt- 
ingly foreign temple, in which the Abbey and St. Margaret's 
could both be packed, still leaving interstices to be filled 
by a padding of city churches. 

For one of London's oddest freaks of ecclesiastical archi- 
tecture you have only to seek Smith Square, just behind the 
Abbey, and study the church of St. John the Evangelist, 
the peculiar oddity of which is its four belfries, one at each 



CHARLES CHURCHILL 279 

corner. I used to be told when I lived within sound of its 
voice that the shape of this church was due to a passionate 
kick on the part of the wealthy lady who endowed it, and 
who, in disgust at the plans submitted by her architect, 
projected the footstool across the room. "There," said 
she, pointing to it as it lay upside down, "build it like 
that"; and the architect did. That is the Westminster 
legend, and it is probably false — a derivative from the 
church's shape rather than the cause of it. St. John's, 
however, has something more interesting to offer than its 
design, for it was here that the scathing author of The 
Rosciad and other satires — Charles Churchill, who was 
born close by in Vine Street (now Romney Street) and edu- 
cated close by at Westminster School — held for a while 
the position of curate and lecturer, in succession to his 
gentle old father. Churchill's name is forgotten now, but 
during the four years in which he blazed it was a menace 
and a power. 

Smith Square still contains two or three of Westminster's 
true Georgian houses, of which there were so many when I 
lived in Cowley Street twelve years ago. New roads and 
new buildings, including the towering pile of offices and 
flats which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have just 
erected, as reckless of the proportions of this neighbour- 
hood as of its traditions, have ruined Westminster. 
Barton Street still holds out ; but for how long ? Either 
Dean's Yard must go soon or the flat-projectors will die of 
broken hearts. 

Barton Street took its name from Barton Booth, the 
actor, who invested his savings in property at Westminster. 
Cowley Street is named after Barton's native village in 
Middlesex, and has no association with Cowley the poet, 
athough when I lived there I used to be told that it was 



280 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

from him that it took its style. Such is oral tradition ! 
There is indeed no need to invent any origin for London's 
street names : their real origin is interesting enough. Why 
Mount Street ? Because Oliver's Mount, a point in the 
fortification lines round London made by the Parliamenta- 
rians in 1643, stood here. Why Golden Square ? Because 
in the neighbourhood was an inn called "The Gelding," 
which gave its name to the square and was then modified 
by the inhabitants because they did not like it. Why Hay 
Hill ? Because the Aye or Eye brook once ran there : 
hence also the two Brook Streets. But the local tradition 
probably involves a load of dried grass. Why Westbourne 
Grove ? Because of the West Bourne, another stream, 
now flowing underground into the Serpentine. 

Why Covent Garden .'' Because it was the garden, not 
for the sale but for the culture of vegetables, belonging to 
the Convent: that is, the Abbey of Westminster. Why 
Chelsea ? Because the river used to cast up a " chesel " 
of sand and pebbles. Selsey in Sussex is the same word. 
Why Cheapside ? Because at the east end of it was a 
market place called Cheaping. Why the Hummums ? 
Merely a Londonisation of Hammam, or Turkish Bath, 
which it was before it became a hotel. Why the Isle of 
Dogs ? Because when Greenwich was a royal resort the 
kennels were here. Why the Strand ? Because it was on 
the shore of the Thames. Why Bayswater ? Because one 
of William the Conqueror's officers, Bainardus of Nor- 
mandy, became possessed of the land hereabout (as of Bay- 
nard's Castle in Sussex) and one of his fields at Paddington 
was called Baynard's Water or Watering. Why Pall Mall ? 
Because the old game of Pall Mall was played there. 
Why Birdcage Walk ? Because Charles II had an aviary 
there. Why Storey's Gate.'' Because Edward Storey, 



CHARLES AND THE ABBEY 281 

keeper of the aviary, lived hard by. Why Millbank? 
Because a water mill stood where St. Peter's wharf now 
is turned by the stream that ran through the Abbey 
orchard (the Abbey orchard !) down Great College Street. 
This was one of the streams that made Thorney Island, on 
which Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament 
stand. It is an island no longer, because the streams which 
divided it from the main land have been dammed and built 
over; but an island it was, its enisling waters being the 
Mill Bank stream, the Thames, a brook which ran down 
Gardiner's Lane, and, on the east, the Long Ditch in 
Prince's Street. Why was Westminster so called ? Be- 
cause St. Paul's was the parent and the Abbey was its 
western dependency — the west minster. 

And here, by way of Dean's Yard, we enter the Abbey, 
which really needs a volume to itself. Indeed the more I 
think about it the more reluctant my pen is to behave at 
all. An old children's book which I happen to have been 
glancing at this morning, called Instructive Rambles in 
London and the adjacent Villages, 1800, puts the case in 
a nutshell. " On entering the Abbey the grandeur and 
solemnity of the whole struck them forcibly ; and Charles, 
addressing his father, said, ' By the little I already see, sir, 
I should think that instead of a single morning it would 
take many days, nay even weeks, to explore and examine 
into all the curious antiquities of this building.'" His 
father agreed with him, and so do I. Equally true is it 
that it would take many weeks to record one's impressions. 
To say nothing would perhaps be better: merely to re- 
mark " And here we enter the Abbey " and pass on. But 
I must, I think, say a little. 

So much has it been restored, and so crowded is it (to 
the exclusion of long views), that one may say that the 



282 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

interest of the more public, part of the Abbey resides rather 
in its associations with the dead than in its architecture. 
.To see it as a thing of beauty one must go east of the 
altar — to the exquisite chapel of Henry VII. The Abbey 
proper has nothing to show so beautiful as this, grave and 
vast and impressive as it is ; but even with this its real 
wonderfulness comes from its dead. For if we except the 
great soldiers and sailors and painters who lie at St. Paul's, 
and the great poet at Stratford on Avon, almost all that 
is most august and illustrious in English history and litera- 
ture reposes here. 

Entering by the north transept you come instantly upon 
the great statesmen, the monument to Chatham, at first 
only a white blur in the dim religious light, being so close 
to the door. Palmerston, Canning and Gladstone are near 
by. The younger Pitt and Fox lie here too, but their 
monuments are in the north aisle of the nave. We have 
seen so many of Fox's London residences : this is the last. 
Beneath the north aisle of the nave lie also men of science 
— Newton and Darwin and Herschel. In the south aisle 
of the nave are various generals and governors, Kneller, 
the painter, Isaac Watts, who wrote the hymns, John 
and Charles Wesley, Major Andre and David Livingstone. 
Poets' Corner, which is a portion of the south transept, 
loses something of its impressiveness by being such a huddle 
and also by reason of certain trespassers there : a fault due 
to lax standards of taste in the past. Had it been realised 
that the space of Westminster Abbey was limited, the 
right of burial there would long ago have been recognised 
as too high an honour to be given indiscriminately to all 
to whom the label of poet was applied. We now use the 
word with more care. The Rev. William Mason and 
Nicholas Rowe, John Phillips and St. Evremond, even 






X', 



:-'i 



', ■*■■ 



w^ 

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WESTMI.NSIER ABBEY 



THE CHAPELS 283 

Gay and Prior, strike one in the light of interlopers. 
Only by dying when they did could they have found their 
way hither. And certain of the monuments are far too 
large, particularly that to John, Duke of Argyll and 
Greenwich, by the exuberant Roubilliac, — no matter how 
Canova may have admired it. The plain slabs that cover 
Johnson and Dickens, Browning and Tennyson, are more 
to one's liking ; or such simple medallions as that to Jenny 
Lind. Shakespeare and Milton are only commemorated 
here ; but Chaucer and Spenser, Jonson (" O rare Ben Jon- 
son" runs his epitaph) and Dryden, Gray and Cowley — 
all these and many others lie at Westminster. 

So far all has been free; but the choir is not free, and 
you must be conducted there officially. The Abbey guides 
are good and not impatient men, with quite enough history 
for ordinary purposes and an amusing pride in their powers 
of elocution. They lead their little flock from chapel to 
chapel, like shepherds in the East, treading as familiarly 
among the dust of kings as if it were the open street. 

The first chapel, St. Benedict's, has only one queen, and 
she a poor unhappy slighted creature — Anne of Cleves ; 
the second chapel, St. Edmund's, has but one also, Anne's 
sister queen Jane Seymour. Yet here lie many noble 
bodies beneath tombs of great interest, notably the Earl 
and Countess of Shrewsbury in the middle; and Eleanor 
de Bohun beneath a fine brass; and the little sister and 
brother of the Black Prince, with tiny alabaster figures of 
themselves atop, who died as long ago as 1340. Here also, 
a modern among these medievalists, lies the author of 
Zanoni and My Novel. A crusader by the doorfray tes- 
tifies to the old laxity of rules regarding visitors, for he is 
cut all over with names and initials and dates — just as the 
backs of the figures in the Laocoon group beneath the Vati- 



284 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

can are scribbled by Italian sightseers. How many persons 
know who it was that first scratched his initials on an Abbey 
tomb ? Of all men, Izaak Walton, who cut his mono- 
gram on Casaubon's stone in the south transept in 1658. 

The next chapel, St. Nicholas's, is the burial place of 
the Percys, a family which still has the right to lie here. 
Here also are the parents of the great Duke of Bucking- 
ham, in marble on the lid of their tomb, and in dust 
below it; and here lies the great Burleigh. Both this 
chapel and that of St. Edmund call for coloured glass. 

We come now to the south aisle of Henry VII's chapel 
and get a foretaste of the glories of that shrine. A very 
piteous queen lies here, Mary Queen of Scots, brought 
hither from Peterboro' by her son James I, and placed 
within this tomb. Charles the Second lies here also, and 
William and Mary and Anne and General Monk, and 
here is a beautiful bronze of the mother of Henry VII. 
In the north aisle is dust still more august, for here is the 
tomb of Elizabeth, erected by James I with splendid im- 
partiality. Queen Mary lies here too, but the guide is 
himself more interested, and takes care that you are more 
interested, in the marble cradle containing the marble 
figure of her sister, the little Sophia, the three-day-old 
daughter of James I ; in the tomb of the little Lady Mary ; 
and in the casket containing the remains of the murdered 
princes, brought hither from the Tower. A slab in the 
floor marks the grave of Joseph Addison, the creator of 
Sir Roger de Coverley, who wrote in the Spectator a passage 
on the Abbey and its mighty dead which should be in 
everyone's mind as they pass from chapel to chapel of this 
wonderful choir, and which I therefore quote. "When I 
look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy 
dies in me: when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, 



HENRY'S VirS CHAPEL 285 

every inordinate desire goes out: when I meet with the 
grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with 
compassion: when I see the tombs of the parents them- 
selves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we 
must quickly follow : when I see kings lying by those who 
deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, 
or the holy men who divided the world with their contests 
and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on 
the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind." 

And so we come to the Abbey's most beautiful part — 
Henry VII's chapel, which is London's Sainte Chapelle. 
It is perhaps the most beautiful chapel in England, and 
beyond question the most wonderful, since not only is it 
an architectural jewel but it holds the dust of some of our 
greatest monarchs. If Henry VII had done nothing else 
he would live by this. Woodwork and stonework are 
alike marvellous, but the ceiling is the extraordinary thing 
— as light almost as lace, and as delicate. Not the least 
beautiful things here are the two stone pillars supporting 
the altar above the grave of Edward VI. Henry VII's 
tomb is in the chantry at the back of the altar, and in the 
same vault lies James I. George II and the Guelphs who 
are buried here have no monuments, but the blackguard 
Duke of Buckingham whom Fenton stabbed is celebrated 
by one of the most ambitious tombs in the Abbey, with 
every circumstance of artificial glory and a row of children 
to pray for him and women to weep. The Duke of Rich- 
mond, another friend of James I, is hardly less floridly com- 
memorated — close to the plain stone that covers Dean 
Stanley. 

A slab in the next chapel or bay marks the grave where 
Cromwell lay. After the Restoration, however, when the 
country entered upon a new age of gold under Charles II, 



286 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

one of the first duties of the Londoner was to remove 
the Protector's body and treat it as of course it so richly 
deserved. It was therefore decapitated: the trunk was 
thrown into a pit at Tyburn and the head was set up on 
Westminster Hall so firmly that it was more than twenty 
years before it fell during a high wind. Charles the Second 
having reigned quite long enough, it was perhaps felt that 
justice had been done ; so the skull was not returned to its 
pinnacle but allowed to pass into reverent keeping. Crom- 
well's statue may now be seen, with a lion at his feet, in the 
shadow of Westminster Hall. The wheel has come full 
circle : he is there. 

Compared with the chapel of Edward the Confessor be- 
hind the high altar, to which we now come, that of Henry 
VII is in age a mere child. Here we pass at once to the 
thirteenth century, Edward I being the ruling spirit. His 
tomb is here — the largest and plainest in the Abbey — and 
here lies his wife Eleanor, for whom the Crosses were built 
— one of the prettiest thoughts that a King ever had — a 
cross at every place where her body rested on its way from 
the North to London, Charing's Cross being the last. 
Edward the Confessor lies in the shrine in the midst: 
Henry V in that to the north of it, and preserved above 
are the saddle, the sword and helmet that he used at Agin- 
court. But popular interest in this chapel centres in the 
coronation chair that is kept here, in which every king and 
queen has sat since Edward I. 

We come lastly to the chapel of St. John the Evangelist, 
crowded with tombs, of which by far the most beautiful, 
and in some ways the most beautiful in the Abbey, is that 
of Sir Francis Vere, copied from Michael Angelo: four 
warriors holding a slab on which are the dead knight's 
accoutrements. A cast of this tomb is in South Ken- 



WESTMINSTER'S WAXWORKS 287 

sington. The guide, however, draws attention rather to 
RoubilHac's masterpiece — in which Death, emerging from 
a vault, thrusts a dart at Mrs. Nightingale, while Mr. 
Nightingale interposes to prevent the catastrophe. At 
Pere la Chaise this would seem exceedingly happy and ap- 
propriate; but it suits not our austere Valhalla. Hidden 
away behind the great tomb of Lord Norris are statues of 
John Philip Kemble and his illustrious sister Mrs. Siddons. 

With the possible exception of the Voltaire and one or 
two of the heads from the Reign of Terror, there is nothing 
at Madame Tussaud's so interesting as the waxworks be- 
longing to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, hidden 
away up a winding stair over the next chapel — Abbot 
Islip's. These one should certainly make an effort to see, 
for they are very quaint and they probably approximate 
very closely to life. The Charles the Second one can be- 
lieve in absolutely, and Elizabeth too. Nelson ought not 
to be there at all, since he was buried at St. Paul's and these 
figures were originally made to rest upon the Abbey graves 
until the permanent memorial was ready ; but all the sight- 
seers being diverted from Westminster to St. Paul's, after 
Nelson's funeral, the wise Minor Canons and lay vicars 
(who took the waxwork profits) set up a rival Nelson of 
their own. It is a beautiful figure anyway. 

In the cloisters, which to my mind are more alluring to 
wander in than the Abbey itself, are other tombs, for never 
were the dead so packed as they are here. Among those 
that lie here, chiefly clerical, are a few Thespians : Foote 
and Betterton and Mrs. Bracegirdle and Aphra Behn, and 
here lies Milton's friend who wrote a sweet book of airs, 
Mr. Henry Lawes, and the prettiest of short epitaphs is 
here too : " Jane Lister, dear childe, 1688." The cloisters 
lead to the ancient Chapter House, an octagonal room 



288 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

dating from the thirteenth century, which once was all the 
Parliament house England had, and to the Chamber of the 
Pyx, where the royal jewels were kept before they went to 
the Tower ; and from the cloisters you gain the residences 
of the Canons of the Abbey, where all live in the odour 
and harmony of sanctity. The Deanery hides round the 
corner to the left as you enter from Dean's Yard, from 
which you also gain Westminster School, where Ben Jonson 
and George Herbert, Dryden and Prior, Sir Christopher 
Wren and Gibbon, Warren Hastings and Cowper, were 
educated — the only historic public school left in London. 
St. Margaret's, the little church under the shadow of the 
Abbey, like its infant child, must be visited for one of the 
finest windows in England, so rich and grave — a window 
with a very curious history. It was given by the magis- 
trates of Dordrecht to Henry VII for his Chapel in the 
Abbey, but as he died before it could be erected, Henry 
VIII presented it to Waltham Abbey, little thinking how 
soon he was going to dissolve that establishment. The 
last Abbot transferred it to New Hall in Essex, which 
passed through many hands — Sir Thomas Boleyn's, Queen 
Elizabeth's, the Earl of Sussex's, the great Duke of Buck- 
ingham's, Oliver Cromwell's and General Monk's. It 
was during General Monk's ownership of New Hall that 
the window was taken from its place and buried in the 
ground for fear it should be broken by Roundheads, who 
had a special grudge against glass and the noses of stone 
saints. It was disinterred when all was safe, but did not 
reach St. Margaret's until 1758. In this church Sir 
Walter Raleigh is buried, and here was married Samuel 
Pepys and (for the second time) John Milton. Latimer 
preached Lenten sermons here before Edward VI; and 
it was in the churchyard that Cowper, a boy at Westminster 
School, was standing when a sexton digging a grave threw 




THE VICTORIA TOWER, ?IOUSE OK LORDS 



AT ST. STEPHEN'S 289 

out a skull which hit him on the leg and began that alarm 
of his conscience which the sinister eloquence of John 
Newton was to maintain with such dire results. 

Of the Houses of Parliament I find myself with nothing 
to say. They are, I often think, beautiful; and then I 
wonder if they are, or are merely clever. Certainly if the 
Victoria Tower is the right size the Clock Tower is too 
slender. The best view is from the Embankment walk by 
St. Thomas's hospital : seen across the water the long low 
line of deUcate stone is very happy and the central spire 
could not be more charming. And yet should there be so 
much ornament, so much daintiness ^ Should not our 
senate, should not our law courts, be plain honest buildings 
innocent of fantastic masonry and architectural whimsies } 
Somerset House, Hampton Court, Chelsea Hospital, St. 
James's Palace, the old Admiralty — should we not adhere 
to their simplicity, their directness ? Yet the Houses of 
Parliament lighted up make a fascinating picture postcard 
for the young. 

Years ago, when I lived in Cowley Street and still 
reverenced men and senators, I used on my way home at 
night to loiter a little in Parliament Square in the hope of 
seeing the demigods whom our caricaturists had made it so 
easy to recognise : Sir William Harcourt with a thousand 
chins ; Mr. Gladstone submerged in his collar ; Mr. Bowles 
with his wooden legs and iron hooks. Those were great 
days, when a Member of Parliament was something exalted 
and awful. But now all is changed. I am older and the 
House is transformed. Members of Parliament are three 
a penny, and knowing quite a number personally I loiter 
in Parliament Square no more. 

The whole British Empire is administered between Par- 
Uament Square and Trafalgar Square. With the exception 



290 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

of the War Office (which Is in Pall Mall) all the Govern- 
ment offices are here; and whatever Parliament may be 
doing, their work goes on just the same. 

New Scotland Yard is here too: on the right, a huge 
square red building which was planned for an opera house, 
abandoned when its foundations were all built, and then 
was bought by the Government for a central police station. 
(The other new opera house which was erected in London 
in recent times is now a music hall.) Having need for 
larger premises, the authorities have just built a second 
block, which is joined to the parent edifice by one of the 
most massive bridges in London — a very fine arch in- 
deed, as impressive as the little Venetian flying passage 
between the Grand Hotel and its annex at Charing Cross 
is delicate and fanciful. 

Without its police London could not be London. They 
are as much landmarks as its public buildings, and are 
almost as permanent and venerable. The Londoner has a 
deep respect for his police, and not a little fear too; it is 
only on the Music Hall stage that they are ridiculed. A 
policeman on duty is often assaulted in a rage, but he is 
never made fun of. Probably no public servant so quickly 
assumes dignity and importance. I suppose that before 
they are policemen they are ordinary, impulsive, even fool- 
ish country youths of large stature (the only London police- 
man I ever knew in the chrysalis stage was a high-spirited 
fast bowler) ; but instantly the uniform and the boots are 
donned they become wise and staid, deliberate and solid, 
breathing law and order. It is one of the best examples 
of the triumph of clothes. I am not sure but that a police- 
man's helmet is not a better symbol of London than the 
dome of St. Paul's : they are indeed rather similar. 

The policeman as a preserver of order is less noticeable in 



THEODORE HOOK 291 

London than as a friend, a counsellor, a preserver of the 
amenities. He regulates the traffic, and from his glove 
there is no appeal. He takes old ladies and nursemaids 
across the road, he writes in his book the particulars of 
collisions, he conveys the victims of motor cars to the 
hospital, he tells strangers the way to the Abbey. The 
London policeman is indeed the best friend of the foreigner 
and the provincial. They need never be at a loss if a 
policeman is in sight, and they will not do amiss if they 
address him as " Inspector." 

London, as I have said, fears its policemen. Drink now 
and then brings a man into open defiance, and on Boat 
Race night the young barbarians of Oxford and Cambridge 
import into the West End a certain exuberance foreign to 
this grey city ; but for the most part the policeman's life is 
uneventful, and his authority is unchallenged. The practi- 
cal joker who used to overturn the Charleys in their boxes 
(that thin and tedious jest) is extinct. We have no high 
spirits any more: they have gone out, they are not good 
form. Theodore Hook, who stands for the highest of all, 
would die of ennui could he visit again glimpses of a 
London moon : Theodore Hook, some of whose " ordinary 
habits," I read in a work on the London of his day, "were 
to hang pieces of meat on the bell-handles of suburban 
villas, in the evening, so that during the night every stray 
dog that happened to pass would give a tug; by this 
means the bell would be set ringing five times an hour to 
the consternation of the family, who, with candles in hand, 
might in vain search the garden, or peep into the road for 
the cause. He would cut signboards in half, and affix the 
odd pieces to each other, so that the signboard owners next 
day would have the pleasure of witnessing their various 
occupations interpreted by the most ridiculous announce- 



292 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

ments in the world. He would stitch his friend's clothes up 
in such a fashion that when, on the following morning, the 
friend got into them, the conclusion that he would at once 
jump to was that he had from some extraordinary and 
unaccountable cause become fearfully swelled during the 
night — a conclusion which Hook would take care to con- 
firm by expressing his great concern at his friend's appear- 
ance, and entreating him to be allowed to call a doctor." 

These were some of his "ordinary habits." What a 
man ! He would also " carry a Highlander from a tobac- 
conist's shop, after dark, and stagger with it towards a cab, 
in which he would deposit the painted figure, giving the 
cabman the address perhaps of some influential person, and 
bidding him drive carefully as the gentleman inside was a 
nobleman slightly intoxicated." But this kind of ebullient 
Londoner is quite extinct, as I have said, and I suppose that 
it is that kill-joy the policeman who has made him so. The 
police have come in since Hook's time : perhaps he made 
them imperative. Nothing can so dispirit a practical joker 
as the large firm hand of the law. The law may to some 
extent have become a respecter of persons, but it still has 
no nose for a joke. The law refers all jokers to the 
scrutiny of the police station, which brings to bear upon 
them a want of sympathy more than Caledonian. 

London can still produce the wag in great numbers, but 
his efforts are entirely verbal and are too little his own. 
It is the habit to extol the street wit of London ; but with 
the best wish in the world, I for one have heard very little 
of it. For the most part it consists in repeating with or 
without timeliness some catchword or phrase of the Music 
Halls. It is customary to credit 'bus drivers with an apt 
and ready tongue ; but my experience is that their retorts 
are either old or pointless. Show me a 'bus driver and I 



OUR MORGUE 293 

will show you a man who is not witty. If he were he 
would not be a 'bus driver. 

The drivers of London all dip into the same long-filled 
reservoir of sarcasm, from which no new draught has 
emerged these fifty years. But tradition has made the 
'bus driver witty, just as it made the late Herbert Camp- 
bell funny; and it will persist. 

As noticeable as the London driver's want of real wit 
is his want of freemasonry. Every driver's hand is turned 
against every other. No policy of vexatiousness is too 
petty for one to put in practice against another: they 
"bore," they impede, they mock, they abuse each other; 
while owing to the laxity of police supervision, the narrow- 
ness of every London street is emphasised by the selfish- 
ness with which the middle of the road is kept. It ought 
to be compulsory for all slow-moving vehicles — all that 
do not want to pass others — to hug the near kerb. 
As it is, they crawl along very near the middle and reduce 
the width of the roadway by nearly half. 

To return for a moment to the police, if you would know 
them at their most charming you must leave an umbrella 
in a cab and then go to Scotland Yard to recover it ; for 
the men who have charge of this department (which is the 
nearest thing to the Paris Morgue that London possesses) 
are models of humorous urbanity. Surrounded for ever 
by dead umbrellas, harassed day by day by the questions 
of a thousand urgent incoherent ladies, they are still com- 
posed and grave and polite. A visit to the adjoining office 
for lost miscellaneous property will convince one in a 
moment that there is nothing that human beings are unable 
to leave behind them in a London cab. 

The old Palace of Whitehall consists now only of the 
great banqueting hall from which Charles I walked to the 



294 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

scaffold on the tragic morning of January 30, 1649. It 
was through the second window from the north end, and 
the scaffold was built out into the street : old prints com- 
memorate the event — the shameful event, may I never 
cease to think it. There is one such print in the hall itself, 
in the same case with the king's beautiful silk vest that he 
wore on the fatal day. 

Whitehall now contains some of the most interesting 
relics in the world; but it is a Museum whose interest is 
now and then almost too poignant. I, for one, simply 
cannot look with composure at the Napoleon relics from 
Longwood, least of all at the chair in which he always sat. 
The mere thought of that caged eagle at St. Helena is 
almost more than one can bear : and these little intimate 
tokens of his captivity are too much. Yet for stronger 
eyes there they are at Whitehall, including the skeleton of 
his favourite horse Marengo. 

Here also are relics of Nelson — the last letter he wrote 
to his dearest Emma, in his nervous modern hand, just 
before Trafalgar, expressing the wish soon to be happy 
with her again ; the clothes he used to wear ; his purse ; a 
portion of the Union Jack that covered him on the Victory, 
for pieces of which his sailors fought among each other; 
the telescope he put to his blind eye; the sword he was 
using when his arm was wounded; the mast of the Vic- 
tory, with a cannon ball through it ; and a hundred other 
souvenirs of England's most fascinating hero, the contem- 
plation of which is lifted by the magic of his personality, 
the sweetness and frailty of it, above vulgar curiosity. 

To pass from Nelson to Wellington is like exchanging 
summer for winter : poetry for prose : romance for science ; 
yet it must be done. Here among other things is Welling- 
ton's umbrella, the venerable Paul Pry gamp which he 




HOLY FAMILY 

AFTER THE DRAWING BY LEONARDO DA VINCI IN THE DIPLOMA GALLERY, 
BURLINGTON HOUSE 



THE OLD ADMIRALS 295 

carried in his political days in London, even as Premier, 
and which is as full of character as anything of his that I 
ever saw, and wears no incongruous air amid such tokens 
of his military life as the flags around the gallery which he 
captured from the French. No one really knows the Iron 
Duke until he has seen this umbrella. Such an umbrella ! 
If one were confronted with it as a stranger and asked to 
name its owner, Wellington would be the last man one would 
think of; yet directly one is told it was Wellington's, one 
says, " Whose else could it be .'' Wellington's. Of course." 

Among other treasures in this Museum are the jaws of 
famous or infamous sharks, one of which was thirty-seven 
feet long ; wonderful models of boats made under difficulties 
by French prisoners out of mutton bones and such unlikely 
material — the French prisoners vying always with the 
patient Chinese carver of cherry stones for the champion- 
ship of the world in ingenuity ; Cromwell's sword ; Drake's 
snuff-box and walking stick; relics of Sir John Moore; 
relics of Sir John Franklin ; relics of CoHingwood ; a model 
of the first battleship to carry guns, the prettiest, gayest, 
most ingratiating junk of a boat, which put to sea to guard 
our shores in 1486; two bottles of port from the Royal 
George, no doubt intended for the delectation of the brave 
Kempenfeldt ; and very interesting plans of the battles of 
Trafalgar and Waterloo. All these and many other ob- 
jects are displayed with much pride and not a little simple 
eloquence by an old soldier — for there is no catalogue. 
Certainly there is in London no more interesting room than 
this : not only for its history but its present possessions. 

Beneath, in the vaults, is a museum of artillery. Old 
guns and modern guns, naval guns and field guns, models 
of forts, shells and grenades, and all the paraphernalia of 
licensed killing may be studied here under the guidance 



296 A WANDERER IN LONDON 

of another old soldier, whose interest in his work never 
flags, and who shows you with much gusto how to work 
a Maxim gun which fires 670 rounds a minute, and at 
2000 yards can be kept playing backwards and forwards 
on a line of men four hundred yards long. "Acts like a 
mowing machine," says the smiling custodian. "Beauti- 
ful ! Cuts 'em down like grass. Goes through three at 
once sometimes, one behind the other." It was with the 
unique and perplexing capabilities of this machine, per- 
fected A.D. 1904, in my mind, that I emerged into Whitehall 
again, and was conscious instantly on the other side of 
the way of the Horse Guard sentries, each motionless on 
his steed. " I know what's in store for you," I thought to 
myself. " Cuts 'em down like grass. . . . Goes through 
three at once sometimes." Such things make it almost a 
work of supererogation to be born : reduce a mother's 
pangs to a travesty; at least when she is the mother of a 
soldier. How odd it all is ! — Nature on the one hand 
building us up so patiently, so exquisitely, cell on cell, and 
on the other Sir Hiram Maxim arranging for his bullets to 
go through three at once ! It is too complicated for me. 
I give it up. 

And so, through the obvious and comparatively unper- 
plexing traffic of Whitehall, we come to Charing Cross 
again and to the end of these rambles, not because there 
is no more to say (for I have hardly begun yet) but because 
one must not go on too long. As a Londoner of Londoners, 
whose knowledge of the town, it has been put on record, 
was extensive and peculiar — far more so than mine will 
ever be — once remarked, the art of writing a letter is to 
leave off at such a point as will "make them wish there 
was more." And when one is writing a book one would 
like to do the same. 



INDEX 



(The names of painters are omitted from this index.) 



Abernethy, 215 

Ackerman, and his Repository, 134 
Adam, the Brothers, 121 
Addison, death of, 250 

— on the Abbey tombs, 284 
Adelphi, the, 120, 121, 123 
Ainsworth's The Tower of London, 

184, 185 
Albert Memorial, 81, 249, 253 

— Hall, 249, 253 
Aldersgate Street, 160 
Aldgate, 200, 203, 204 

Alien, a princely, in Bloomsbury, 
223 

Ambassadors' Yard, 47 

Americans, 143, 221, 243 

Anarchists, 230 

Apsley House, 2-4 

Archbishops at Lambeth Palace, 
275, 276 

Architecture in London, 6-8, 18, 
51, 75, 121, 129, 133, 134, 139, 
140, 144, 154, 156-158, 169, 
184, 201, 213, 215, 219, 220, 
222, 250, 253, 265, 266, 275, 
277-279, 285, 289, 290 

Astor Estate Office, 8, 12, 120, 121 

Aubrey House, 12, 248 

— Walk, 13 

"Auld Robin Gray," 40 



Babies, Kensington, 249 
Bacon, Francis, and Gray's Inn, 
214 



Barrie, Mr. J. M., 10, 13, 141, 241, 

263 
Bartholomew Close, 157 
— Fair, 158 
Beardsley, Aubrey, 222 
Bedford, Duke of, and Blooms- 
bury, 222 
Beggar's Opera, The, 141 
Bentham, Jeremy, embalmed, 222 
Berkeley Square, 35, 40, 41 
Beverages of the past, 161, 162 
Billingsgate, 154 
Birkbeck Bank, its bas-reliefs, 81 
Bishop's Wood, 161 
Blenheim, battle of, relics of, at 

the Tower, 187 
Blood, Colonel, 186, 270 
Bloomsbury, 213, 216-223 
Bliicher in London, 47 
Bohemia, Queen of, portrait of, 83 
Booth, Barton, 279 
Borough, 204, 207 
Botanical Gardens, 241 
Boyer, James, and Coleridge, 218 
Bracegirdle, Mrs., 141 
Brick Court, Temple, 138 
Bright, John, 4 
British Museum — 

Roman Emperors, 225 

Graeco-Roman sculptures, 225, 
226 

Greek ante-room, 226 

Ephesus Room, 226 

Elgin Marbles, 227 

Terra-cottas, 227 

Bronzes, 227 

Ancient Egypt, 228 

Pottery, 228 



297 



298 



INDEX 



British Museum — continued 

Medieval Room, 228 

Gems, 228 

Hall of Inscriptions, 228 

Books and MSS., 229 
Bronte, Charlotte, 229 
Brownrigg, Mrs., 27 
Bruiser, a modern, 125 
Buckingham, 1st Duke of, 284, 285, 

288 
Buckland, Frank, 254 
Bull and Bush, the, 161 
Bunhill Fields, 170, 171 
Bunyan, portrait of, 83 
— memorial window to, 206 
Burglars, a theory, 11 
Burke, Edmund, 232 
Burlington Arcade, 53 
Burne-Jones, Sir E., 220, 252 
Butchers, superior to the march of 

time, 201 
Butchers' Row, 56 



Cab-fares, 22 

Cabmen's Shelter, 23 

Caldecott, Randolph, memorial to, 

165 
Carlton House Terrace, 47 
Carlyle, T., and his bootmaker, 46 

— statue of, 80 

— death mask of, 84 

— Boehm's bust of, 84 

— Museum at Cheyne Row, 173, 

174, 261 
Carnavalet, the, in Paris, 173-175, 

236 
Carving in wood, 256 
Cathedrals — 

New Roman Catholic, 7, 278, 

279 
St. Paul's, 149, 150, 152, 153, 

281, 290 
Southwark (St. Saviour's), 205, 

206 
Central Criminal Court, new, 155 
Chantrey Bequest, 272, 274, 275 
Chapel of the Ascension, 247 
Charing Cross, 2 



Charles I., his statue decorated, 78 

— execution of, 293, 294 
Charterhouse, the, 159, 160 

— School, 160 

— Square, 159 
Chauffeurs, 16 

Cheapside and John Gilpin, 177 
Chelsea, 265-270 

— Hospital, 268, 269 
Chemists, change and decay in, 

55, 56 
Cheshire Cheese, the, 143, 144 
Cheyne Row, 266 

— Walk, 265, 267, 268 
Children's Hospital, Great Ormond 

Street, 165, 220 
Children and Madame Tussaud's, 
236, 237 

— and Kensington Gardens, 239, 

241, 253 
Chinese at Blackwall, 195 
Chop House, the, 130, 131, 143 
Christie's, 232 
Christy Minstrels (Moore and 

Burgess), 52, 53 
Churches — 

All Hallows Barking, 169, 184 

Bow, 121 

Christchurch, Woburn Square, 

222 
St. Bartholomew the Great, 154, 

156-158 
St. Benet's, 153 
St. Botolph's, Aldgate, 168 
St. Botolph's Without, Alders- 
gate, 170 
St. Bride's, Fleet Street, 120, 

145 
St. Clement Danes, 134, 143 
St. Dunstan 's-in-the-East, 17, 

144, 145, 154, 205 

St. Dunstan 's-in-the-West, 144, 

145, 175. 

St. Ethelburga, Bishopsgate 

Street, 169 
St. George the Martyr, 207 
St. George's, Hart Street, 220, 

221 
St. Giles '-in-the-Fields, 221 
St. Helen's, 169, 170 



INDEX 



Churches — continued 

St. James's in Garlickhithe, 153, 

154 
St. James's, Piccadilly, 49, 51 
St. John's, Westminster, 7, 278 
St. Lawrence, Jewry, 168, 169 
St. Luke's, Chelsea (Chelsea Old 

Church), 266 
St. Magnus the Martyr, 154 
St. Margaret Pattens, 169 
St. Margaret's, Westminster, 

278, 288 
St. Mark's, North Audley Street, 

76 
St. Martin 's-in-the- Fields, 75, 

77, 133 
St. Mary-le-Strand, 133, 134 
St. Mary, Woolnoth, 168 
St. Michael's, College Hill, 154, 

168 
St. Michael's, Cornhill, 170 
St. Pancras, 222, 223 
St. Patrick's, Soho, 229 
St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 125, 

126 
St. Peter's, Cornhill, 170 
St. Sepulchre's, 155, 156 
St. Stephen's, Walbrook, 169 
Church Bells, 166, 167 
Churchill, Charles, 279 
Cinquevalli, Paul, 65-67 
City, beginning of, 137 

— merchants, burial-place of, 169 

— churches, 167-169 
Civilisation, modernity of, 35, 

36 
Clifford's Inn, 137 
Cloth Fair, 157, 158 
Clothes, the triumph of, 291 
Clubs, 46, 48 
Cock Lane ghost, 156 
Cogers' Club, 130, 145 
Colebrooke Row, 171, 172 
Congreve's Love for Love, 141 
Coleridge and Boyer, 218 
Constable of Tower, desirable post, 

187 
Coram, Captain, 216, 217 
Corday, Charlotte, 174, 175 
Coronation chair, 286 



County Councillors, demolishing 

nature of, 126, 133, 134 
Covent Garden, 120, 124, 126, 127 
contrasted with the Paris 

Halles, 124 
— — the porters at, 124, 125 
Cowper and his John Gilpin, 177- 

182 
Crabbe, his likeness to Parson 

Adams, 219, 220 
Cricket, 210, 218, 242, 245, 243 
Cromwell, 80, 84, 250, 285, 286, 

288 
Crosby Hall, 205 

Crown Office Row, Temple, 138 
Crystal Palace, seen from Fleet 

Street, 147 



D 



Dean's Yard, 279, 281, 288 
Defoe, burial-place of, 171 
Demeter, the, of Cnidos, 225, 226 
Demon Distributor, the, 56, 57 
Dickens, Charles, and London, 20 

— and punch, 162 

— and his world, 190 

— his MSS., 260 
Diplodocus-Carnegii, 264 
Disraeli, his simile of the hansom, 

21 

— his statue decorated, 78 

— birthplace of, 121 

Docks, East India, 191, 194-196 

Dodd, Dr., 27, 189 

Dogs, 241, 247 

Don Saltero's Museum, 267 

Dorset Square, 246 

Dryden, 127, 232 

Duke of York's column, 80 

Dyce and Forster collection, 257, 

260 
Dyer, George, 171, 188 



E 



East End, its character and people, 
198-202 

Economy, London and Paris con- 
trasted, 124 



300 



INDEX 



Edmonton and John Gilpin's ride, 

177-182 
Edward I., his tomb, 286 

— and Queen Eleanor's Crosses, 

286 
Edwardes Square, 248 
Egyptian Hall, 53 
Elgin Marbles, 136, 225, 227 
Elizabeth, and Mary Queen of 

Scots' death warrant, 139 
Elliston, 129 
Elvin, Joe, 62 

Ely Place, and chapel, 214 
Embankment, 204 
Epitaphs, 206 
Epping Forest, 201, 202 
Essex Head, the, 129 
Evans's Rooms (in Thackeray's 

day), 125 
Examination paper in London 

topography, 146, 148, 149 
Executions, 27, 155, 156 

— and sinister customs, 155, 156 

— at the Tower, 183, 185 



Fauntleroy, 233 

Fawkes, Guy, in the Tower, 185 

Fenton, Lavinia, Duchess of Bol- 
ton, 141 

Fire, the great, 153, 154 

Flower-sellers, 58 

Fogs, varieties of, 23-25 

Foreigners in London, 131, 230 

Foundling Hospital, 216-218 

Fox, George, 171 

Fragonard, 31 

French sailors in London, 1905, 75, 
76 

Fruit growing in London, 222 

Funerals, East End, 199 



G 



Garrick, death of, 121 
Gay's Trivia, 36, 37 
Gilpin, John, a disillusionment, 
177, 180-182 



Gladstone, unveiling of the statue 
of, 78, 79 

Golden Square, 230, 231, 280 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 138 

Gordon Square, 219 

Government Offices, 289 

Granger, Rev. James, and museum- 
making, 175 

Gray's Inn, 214, 215 

Greenaway, Kate, 163-165 

Griffin, the, 134, 136 

Grosvenor Square, 35, 40, 42 

Guildhall, and its London relics, 
172 

Gunnings, the Miss, 38 

Guy's Hospital, 208 



H 



Hamilton, Duke of, Alexander, 246 
Hamilton Place, 14, 15 
Hampstead, 161 

— Heath, 238, 259 

Handel and the Foundling Hos- 
pital, 217 

Hansom cab drivers, 20-23 

Hatton Garden, 214 

Hay Hill, 41 

Hazhtt, death of, 232 

Highgate, 161 

Highlander, wooden, last survivals 
of, 56 

Highwayman's riding feat, 40 

Hoby the bootmaker, 46 

Hogarth and the Foundling Hos- 
pital, 216 

Hogg, his life of Shelley quoted, 39 

Holborn, and the changing sea- 
sons, 209 

Holland, third Lord, 250, 251 

Holly Lodge, 248, 251 

Home, French and English sense 
of, contrasted, 78 

Hook, Theodore, 233, 291, 292 

Hot potato men, 211 

Houndsditch, 170 

Houses, London and country, 
contrasted, 9 

— covetable, 10-13, 35, 187, 250, 

268 



INDEX 



301 



Houses, — continued 

— stately, 35 

— staid, 45 

— small and quaint, 266 

— smallest and quaintest, 13, 14, 

158 

— old, 201 

Hucks, the brewer, 220 
Humour in London, 61-63, 292 
Hyde Park Corner, 2 
Hypnos, 225, 227 



Imperial Institute, 253, 254 

Innkeepers and curiosities, 267 

Innocents' Corner, 284 

Inns, old, 206, 207 

Institute of Painters in Water 

Colours, 51, 81 
Irving, Edward, 219 
— Sir Henry, 128, 129 
Islington, 171, 172 



Jack's Palace, 195 

Jack Straw's Castle, 161 

Jackson of Bond Street, 125 

Jacobs, Mr., and his world, 190, 
191 

Jamrach's, 188, 189 

Jeffreys, Judge, 184 

Jessopp, Dr., on the London gaze, 
147 

Jewellers, London and Paris, 
contrasted, 54 

Jews, 197, 203, 221, 222 

Johnson, Dr., and Lord Chester- 
field, 42, 43 

on wealth, 49 

his church, and tablet to, 134 

and a walk down Fleet 

Street, 143, 144 

memorial in St. Paul's, 153 

and Osborne, 215 

and Dr. Campbell, 219 

Jonson, Ben, and bricklaying, 140 

Julius Csesar, 225 

Jumbo, 242-244 



K 



Keats, John, 163, 208 
Keith, Rev. Alexander, 38 
Kelly, Fanny, 232, 233 
Kensington, 247-252 

— Gardens, 13, 238-241 

— its character, 248 

— Palace, 248-250 
Gardens, 12 

— South, 252, 253 

— Square, 248 

— routes to, 247 

King's Bench prison, 207 
Kingsley, Charles, his dictum on 

houses, 11 
Kingsway, 126, 140, 196 



Lamb, Charles, and Russell Street, 
127 

— and Temple Bar, 135, 136 

— and the Temple, 138, 139 

— at Colebrooke Row, 171 

— and the iron figures of St. Dun- 

stan's, 175, 212 

— Meyer's portrait of, 220 

— and Hazlitt's death, 232 

— and Fauntleroy, 233 
Lambeth Palace, 275, 276 
Lanes with odd names, 153 
Lauder, Harry, 67 
Laureates and their poems, 47 
Law courts, 134 
Leadenhall Market, 170 

Leeds, Duchess of, stanza on, 48 
Leicester Square, 59 
Leighton, Lord, 153, 252 
Leno, Dan, 62-64, 72, 73 
Lincoln's Inn, 137, 139, 140 

Chapel, 140 

Fields, 140-143 

Theatre, 140, 141 

Gateway, 140 

Lister, Jane, "dear childe," 287 
Little White Bird, The, 141 
Lloyd, Marie, 62 
Lockyer's pills, 206 



302 



INDEX 



Londoners, their attitude towards 
traffic, 16 

— of the past, 36 

— new types of, 56, 57 

— as audience, 60 

— and midday performances, 68 

— and the Strand, 119 

— the best of, Pepys, 123 

— and new thoroughfares, 127 

— their submission to foreigners, 

131 

— their attitude towards griev- 

ances, 131, 132 

— their zest for demolition, 133- 

135 

— a Londoner of, Lamb, 139 

— unchangeable, 141 

— their gaze, 146 

— their ignorance of London, 147 

— their present tastes, 163 

— their zest for any spectacle, 176 

— not public-spirited, 131, 132, 

173 

— in squalid conditions, 192 

— in the East End, 198 

— their dislike of being out of the 

swim, 204 

— the true, 211-213 

— their attitude to the police, 290, 

291 
London Bridge, 204, 205 
Lord Mayor, 167 

— — and civic pomp, 176 
Lovat, Lord, Simon Eraser, exe- 
cution of, 183 

Lowe, Sir Hudson, 76 

M 

Macaulay, his infant hospitality 
to Hannah More, 177 

— quoted, 151, 152 
Maiden Lane, 126, 137 
Mall, the new, 47 
Marble Arch, 239, 240 
Marceline, 72-74 
Marriage made easy, 38 
Marshalsea, 207, 208 
Martyrs, 158, 159 
Marvell, Andrew, 126, 221 



Mary Queen of Scots, tomb of, 

284 
Maskelyne and Cook, 53 
Maxim, Sir Hiram, 296 
Mayfair, 34, 35, 37 
Meredith, Mr., 267, 268 
Metsu, Gabriel, 31, 32 
Meyer, Henry, his portrait of 

Lamb, 200 
Millbank, 280, 281 
Miller, Joe, 134 

Milton, commonplace-book of, 299 
Miniatures, 33 
Monmouth, Duke of, and Soho 

Square, 230, 231 
Monument, the, 156 
Monuments, anomalies in, 152, 153 
Moore, Sir John, monument to, 152 
More, Hannah, 177 
More, Sir Thomas, burial-place of, 

266 
Morris, Captain, his song on Pall 

Mall, 48 
Motor cars, 55, 151, 152, 291 
Motor omnibuses, 4, 5 
Much Ado About Nothing, 128 
Munden, burial-place of, 221 
Murder, decadence of, 236 
Murray, John, 42 
Museums — 

British, 224-229 

Carlyle's House, 173, 261 

Guildhall, 172 

Natural History, 263, 264 

Soane, 141-143 

South Kensington, 253-263 

United Service, 294-296 

Suggestions for an historic 
London, 172, 173, 175 
Music Halls, 52, 53, 59-65, 67 

celebrities, 62-67 

Myddleton, Sir Hugh, statue of, 
172 

N 

Napoleon, relics of, 236, 294 
National Gallery — 

Official catalogue, 87 

Where to begin, 103 



INDEX 



303 



National Gallery — continued | 

Northern and southern painters, 

difference between, 103, 104, 

111, 112 
Italian school, 85-92, 94-102, 

103, 104, 109 
Venetian school, 97-100 
Lombardy and Parma, 100, 101 
Early Flemish, 92-94 
Later Flemish, 103-109 
Spanish, 110, 111 
German, 111, 112 
French, 112 
British, 105, 112-118 
Nelson, and Lady Nelson, 44, 45 

— column, 75, 76 

— burial-place of, 153 

— wax effigy at Westminster, 287 

— relics of, 294 

New Arabian Nights, 20 
New River, 171 
Newgate, 155, 156, 172 
Newspapers and offices, 137 
Nightingale monument, 237 
No. 1 London, 37 
Norton Folgate, 56 
November in London, 210 

O 

"Old Q," 15, 49 

Olivia, 128 

Omnibuses best view of, 132, 133 

— and sign of winter, 210 
Omnibus drivers, 4, 15, 292 
Opera Houses, 290 
Oratory, open-air, 239 
Organs, 11, 242, 243 
Ortheris, Private, 212 
Osborne, his book shops, 215 



Pall Mall, 45, 47 

Paris and London contrasted, 173 

— museums, historical, 173-175 

— the quay, 204 

Parks, their characteristics, 238, 
239 

— Battersea, 202, 238, 239, 270 

— Green, 2, 14, 15, 44, 132, 133, 

239 



Parks — continued 

— Hyde, 3, 11, 202, 238-240, 245 

— Regent's, 187, 188, 196, 239- 

241, 245 

— St. James's, 24, 47, 202, 239, 

240, 245 

— Victoria, 202, 238 
Park Lane, 26 
Parliament, 289 

— Hill and St. Paul's, 150 

— Houses of, 281, 289 

— Members of, 289 

— Square, 289 

Patmore, Coventry, portrait of, 

82 
Patriotism, English and French, 

contrasted, 78 
Peacocks, 240, 245 
Peel, Sir Robert, statue of, 177 
Penn, William, 184, 250 
Pentonville, 172 
Pepys, 122, 123, 140 
Peter the Great, 122 
Peter Pan, 10, 13, 241 
Phil's Buildings, Houndsditch, 203 
Piccadilly, 14, 49, 50, 52-54, 133, 

147 
Pickwick, Mr., 160, 162, 163 
Pictures in London, 4, 26, 28-33, 

44, 45, 101, 109, 110, 113, 142, 

216, 252, 257-260, 262, 263, 

271-276 

— "best" and "favourite," 85, 

86, 98, 99, 105 
Picture Galleries — 

Diploma, 51, 52 

National Portrait, 81-84 

National, 85-118 

South Kensington, 258-263 

Tate, 271-275 

Wallace Collection, 28-33 
Pigeons, 211, 240 
Pindar, Peter (Dr. Wolcot), 126 
Plantin Museum, Antwerp, 173 
Poets in the Abbey, 282 

— discredited, 182 
Policemen, 290-293 
Poison, 126 

Porters, resting-place for, by the 
Green Park, 14 



304 



INDEX 



Porters — continued 

— their physiognomy, 124 

— and boxing, 125 
Postman's Park, 170 
Practical jokers, extinction of, 292 
Princes, the little, 185, 284 
Pudding, a famous, 144 

Q 

Quack, a feminine, 200 
Queen Anne's Gate, 277 

Mansions, 277 

Queen's Walk, 44 

R 

Railway termini, the most inter- 
esting, 191, 194 
Raphael, his cartoons, 257, 258 
Record Office lodge, 13, 14 
Regent, the, waylaid by footpads, 
41 

and Sheridan's death, 53 

Regent's Canal and barges, 195, 

196 
Restaurants, 130, 231, 232 
Reynolds, relics of, at the Diploma 

Gallery, 52 
Ridler's Hotel, and port wine 

negus, 162 
Roberts, Arthur, 73 
Robey, George, 62 
Rogers, Samuel, 16, 40, 45 
Roman Catholic Cathedral, new, 

192 
Roman Catholics, 151, 214 
Rossetti, 265, 267, 268 
Roubilliac, 283, 286, 287 
Round Pond, 249, 250, 253 
Royal George, the, relics at White- 
hall, 182, 295 
Royal state barge, 254 
Roofs and chimneys, 192 



St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 157 
St. Clement's Inn, 133 



St. Giles and St. James, an obsolete 

contrast, 221 
St. James's Hall, 52 

Palace, 46, 47 

Place, 45 

Square, 48 

St. John's Wood, 245 

St. Paul's Cathedral, 120, 146, 

149-153, 192 
Sally, the chimpanzee, 242 
Salting, Mr. George, 96, 256 
Savile Row, 53, 248 
Savoy Chapel, 120, 123, 124 
Scaffolding and cranes, pictur- 

esqueness of, 7 
Scotland Yard, new, 290, 293 
"Screevers, " 77 
Sculptors of St. Paul's, 152 
Sea gulls, 270 
Seals and sea lions, 245 
Serpentine, 24 
Shakespeare, "Chandos " portrait 

of, 83, 84 

— window to, in St. Helen's 
Church, 170 

Shallow, Mr. Justice, 133, 215 
Sheepshanks Collection, 259 
Shelley, 39 
Shepherd Market, 35 
Sheppard, Jack, 27 
Sheridan, 53 
Shipping, 193, 194, 205 
Shops, 41, 43, 46, 51, 54-58, 
201 

— changes in, 55, 56 

— old, 145 

— live stock, 170 

— curiosity, 215, 233 

Siddons, Mrs., her rural house in 

Gower Street, 222 
Simpson's, 130 

Slumberers (in the parks), 239 
Smith, John, resuscitated, 27 
Smith Square, 278, 279 
Smithfield, 157-159 

— Market, 158 

Soane Museum, 141-143 

Society of Arts, and tablets, 121, 

127 
Socrates and Bond Street, 54 



INDEX 



305 



Soho, 229-232 

— Square, 229 
Somerset House, 120 
Songs, popular, 242, 243 
Sotheby's, 129 
Spaniard's, the, 161 
Sparrows, 211 

Spires, 207, 220 
Spring in London, 209, 210 
Stained glass, 154, 205, 206 
Stanley, Dean, 285 
Staple Inn, 173, 213 
Statues, 77-81, 120 

— English and French, value of, 

contrasted, 78 
Steeple Jack and Nelson's column, 

76 
Sterne, burial-place of, 247 
Stevens, Alfred, his lions, 140 
Stevenson, R. L., 20 
Strand, 119, 120, 123, 130, 132-134, 

137 
Streets — 

Adam, 121 

Albemarle, 41, 42 

Arlington, 44, 45 

Arundel, 123, 129 

Audley, South, 10, 43 

Barton, 5, 279 

Beaufort, 10 

Berkeley, 2, 16, 40 

Bishopsgate, 170 

— Without, 171 
Bolton, 46 

Bond, 41, 51, 54, 57 
Bouverie, 147 
Bow, 127, 128 
Broad, 137 
Brook, 43, 250 
Bruton, 41 

Buckingham, 121-123 
Burlington, Old, 53 
Bury, 49 
Cannon, 154 
Charles, 41 
Charterhouse, 214 
Chesterfield, 41 
Church, Chelsea, 266 

— Kensington, 55, 248 
Clarges, 39 



Streets — continued 
Cleveland, 230 
College, Great, 281 
Compton, Old, 231, 232 
Cork, 53 

Cowley, 279, 289 
Cranbourn, 67 
Curzon, 10, 38-40 
Dean, 232 
Dover, 41 
Down, 133 

Duke, St. James, 28, 49 
— Strand, 121 
Endell, 127 
Essex, 120, 129 
Farm, 42 
Farringdon, 204 
Fleet, 2, 8, 135-138, 143, 144, 

147 
Frith, 231, 232 
Gerrard, 231, 232 
Giltspur, 156 
Gloucester, 219 
Godliman, 153 
Gower, 17, 221, 222 
Greek, 231, 232 
Grosvenor, 42 
Half Moon, 39 
Harley, 230, 233 
Hertford, 37 

High Street, Borough, 207 
Holywell, 55 
James, Adelphi, 121 
James, Great, 216 
Jermyn, 7, 42 
John, Adelphi, 121 
Kensington High, 248, 249 
King, 48 
Lant, 207 

Leadenhall, 170, 177 
Middlesex, 203 
Mount, 42, 280 
Newgate, 155 
Newman, 233 
Norfolk, 129 

Ormond, Great, 219, 220 
Oxford, 56-58, 155, 224, 230 
Parliament, 204 
Percy, 230 
Portland, Great, 56, 230, 233 



306 



INDEX 



streets — continued 
Red Lion, 220 
Regent, 8, 57 
Russell, 127 
St. George's, 188 
St. James's, 46, 47 
St. Thomas's, 208 
Stratton, 15 
Thames, Upper, 153, 154 

— Lower, 154 
Threadneedle, 176 
Tilney, 26 
Tower, Great, 154 

— Little, 154 
Villiers, 121, 122 
Wardour, 55, 231 
Wentworth, 203 
White Horse, 37 
Wood, 203 
Young, 13 

Narrowness of, 8, 293 
Busiest rich man's, 49 
Men's, 45, 46, 248 
Cosmopolitan, 119, 120, 230 
Best old London, 144 
Fallacy concerning, 146 
Joys of the crowd, 155, 176 
Richest for the observer, 200 
The best Georgian, 215, 216 
French, 231, 232 

The most sensible, 233 
Women's, 248 

Origin of names of, 279, 280 
Good to wander in, 277 
Sviicide, Thames not popular for, 

270 
Sunday, 166, 198, 199, 201-203, 
242, 270 



Tabard, the, 204, 206 
Tailors, their headquarters, 53 
Tate Gallery, 271-275 
Temple, the, and Lamb, 127 
Temple, 137-139 

— Bar, 135, 136, 140, 211 

— Church, 138 

— Middle Temple Hall, 139 
Tennyson, grave of, 283 



Terriss, the murder of, 126 
Terry, Miss Ellen, 128, 129 
Thackeray, 138, 160 
Thames, the, 269-271, 275 
Theobald's Park, 135, 136 
Thomson, James, and The Seasons, 

184 
Thurlow, Lord, 219, 220 
Tich, Little, 62 

Tobacconists, new and old, 55, 56 
Tonson, his bookshops, 215 
Tottenham, and John Gilpin's 

ride, 177-179 
Tower, the, 183-187 

— best things of, 187 

— menagerie, 187, 188 

— old guide-books to, 187, 188 
Trafalgar Square, 75 

Trinity Almshouses, Mile End 
Road, 201 

— House, the, 189 
Trott, Albert, 246 

Turk's Head, the, Soho, and ar- 
tists, 232 

Turner, J. W. M., his parents' mar- 
riage, 126 

— birthplace of, 126 

— burial-place of, 153 

— at Chelsea, 265, 273 
Turpin, Dick, relic of, 161 
Tussaud, Madame, 174, 233-237, 

287 
Twigg, Otho, 69, 74 
Tyburn, 27 



Vanes, 120, 121, 155 

Victoria, Queen, and Kensington, 

249 
Violanti, his feat from St. Martin's 

spire, 77 
Voltaire, 236 

W 

Walpole, Horace, 35, 40, 44 
Walton, Izaak, 284 
Ware, and John Gilpin's ride, 181 
Water colours, 258 



INDEX 



307 



Waterloo, effect of battle of, on 
London, 8 

— Bridge, 120 
Watts, G. F., 252, 274 
Weather-cottages, 170 
Wellclose Square, its sea associa- 
tions, 189 

Wellington, Duke of, statues of, 3 

— and ladies' smoking, 14 

— and his bootmaker, 46 

— monument in St. Paul's, 152, 

153 

— relic of, at the Tower, 186, 

187 

— his umbrella, 294, 295 
Wesley, John, 160 
Westminster, 204, 275, 277-289 

— Abbey, 281-288 

— chief interest in, 281, 282 

— Henry VII. 's Chapel, 282, 284- 

286 

— guides, 283 

— sightseers, 283, 284 

— chapels, 283-286 

— waxworks, 287 

— cloisters and Chapter House, 

287, 288 

— School, 288 



Wheatley and Cunningham, 43 
Whistler, 25, 261, 269, 271 
Whitehall, 46, 293-296 
White Hart, the, Southwark, 207 
Whittington, Dick, burial-place 

of, 154 
Wild, Jonathan, 27 
Will's Coffee House, 127 
Williams, the murderer, 188 
Wither, George, in the Mar- 

shalsea, 208 
WofRngton, Peg, Pond's portrait 

of, 83 
Wolfe, 82, 187 
Wolsey, Cardinal, his palace, 144, 

173 
Wordsworth's poor Susan, 177 
Wren, Sir Christopher, 133, 136, 

149, 150, 249, 250 



York Water Gate, 123 



Zoological Gardens, 241 







c' 



K 6>3 



